Patrick Lynch started selling Real Change soon after he arrived in Seattle. “For a week I was going to all these feeds, and I found myself stuck.” He and a friend were doing the same thing over and over: “He’d go through this system, he’d go to the same place and they’d give him labor jobs. That’s not really for me, but I didn’t want to panhandle. It’s just not something that I enjoy doing. I’d rather interact in a different way with people.”
So Patrick decided to try Real Change. He appreciated that the staff member doing the orientation “wasn’t trying to do a hard sell. A lot of the corporate structures that I’ve been involved in, I feel like I’m being coerced to buy their product in order to sell their product. The paper gives me a different feeling. I actually feel that I’m providing something more than just the paper. Real Change is connected to a community.”
That’s important to Patrick. He doesn’t feel well-served by many social programs. “I tend not to go to shelters because there’s a lot of extra stuff that you have to put up with. You end up close to somebody who’s a stranger. You try to move, they freak out: ‘You’re in a free place to sleep, just lay down and shut up!’ Me, I’m comfortable on concrete.”
“I can make enough money that I can feed myself well with the kinds of food that I need. And I’m trying to get myself in good shape, so I can be healthy.” Patrick came to the interview carrying two heavy bags. “Carrying all this stuff around has actually created this constant source of isometric and impact training. If you do something consistently physically, you develop a kind of endurance.”
Living in Seattle is a great improvement over Arizona. “I felt like a magnet for negative things in Phoenix. I had a series of personal tragedies and for years I found myself completely dysfunctional.” He had trouble finding a decent place to live because of a record of evictions when he was younger. “I would find places on Craigslist and I ended up living with some crazy tweakers [meth users]; it was a really cheap place, but I’d sleep better if I was on the streets.”
Moving to Seattle meant a fresh start for Patrick and his skills. “I’ve done electrical construction work throughout my life. I’ve done restaurant jobs. I’m well-versed with how to take apart and put together a computer.” But he hasn’t found anything here that’s as rewarding as selling Real Change. As a result, he’s thinking of going to college. He says he now knows journalism from the outside, and he’d like to see it from the inside. “I’m interested in seeing what the body of knowledge looks like and what exactly they teach.”
“Journalism and linguistics ... communications. That’s one of the keys to being human.”