This blog doesn't represent the views of all employees at Mutiny Shop.

This blog is written by me, Abrianna Wood, the founder of https://www.MutinyShop.com.

Please don't judge me without reading all that I have to say. Please don't take my words out of context. I'm just trying to have a small voice in a gigantic world. I don't mean to hurt anyone with my words. If you disagree with anything, please talk to me first so I can learn your point of view, before responding with anger.

I want to discuss more controversial subjects without harming the reputation and sales of Mutiny Shop, but I also don't have much of an alternative medium. My views do not represent the views of my employees so please do not do anything to effect their job security. Like taking any of my views out of context.

I am a Independent Centrist, which doesn't have much meaning nowadays because many extreme left and right wing people claim to be in the center.

I have my biases, but I am also eager for conversation and new ways of seeing the world. My opinions are better understood in the context of who I am. Which is why, in this post, I will explain the highlights of my life.

Me!

When I was three my Dad died. This left my Mom alone to raise five kids. She managed to go back to college and find a job. This meant that she was almost never home and my siblings raised me. They all had drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and violent tendencies. As the youngest, I looked up to them and decided what I would never be.

In high school I volunteered at the Utah Hogle's Zoo for five years. While volunteering I specialized in advocating for polar bears and climate change. I was even selected to be the Arctic Ambassador and travel to Canada.

I studied polar bears in the wild and attended lectures with the "top" climate experts and conservationists in the world.

See more here: https://www.ksl.com/?sid=4468458

I was also in the Future Farmers of America. Where I owned, raised and sold pigs, cows, and sheep for slaughter. My main project, however, was backpacking and dairy goats. I went to the state speaking contest with a bipartisan speech titled "Advocating for Environmentalist and the Agricultural industry at the same time."

The project was raising strong castrated goats trained to follow people with the loyalty of a dog while carrying upto 60 pounds of gear during backpack trips. This was easier on the environment than horses because their manure is chemically cold instead of hot (so it did no damage like dear droppings). Goats are also less regulated, so they can travel to environmentally protected areas. Finally they had much more mobility than horses so they could assist people up tall mountains, which is extremely useful for researchers because they could carry more gear to study locations.

The female goats produced milk which I used to bottle raise the male goats (for ultimate docility - I also had them regularly visit their moms and females were left with their moms). I actually made the most money selling pictures of people bottle feeding and playing with the baby goats at Wheeler Historic Farm, where the project was based (because I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah).

Bottle feeding with a girl scout group.

This produced the income I needed to grow the project into a heard of seven goats. Unfortunately I learned a hard lesson. My teacher was helping me raise the goats, but he was raising them like meat goats for slaughter. He gave them so many dewormers without even asking me that it stunted their growth. I did so much research trying to find out what was wrong: mainly I thought it was a copper deficiency and was supplementing them in vein.

Finally, my main baby, the first castrated male I had bottle raised called Kazam (the goats were named Abra, Kadabra, Ala, Kazam, Bippity, Boppity, and Boo.) was so little and weak at six months old that he died in my arms of pneumonia.

Me with Kaz

I was accepted to another environmental research project called Girl's On Ice. I climbed to the top of Mount Baker to measure the glaciers. The data was to track if the glacier was receding and how much if so.

Writing down data on melting ice.

The glacier.

Climbing with crampons and a safety line.

I'm going to pull the card I am not allowed to pull. I have a black best friend, I have a peruvian best friend, finally I have a German best friend. These were my three best friends in high school.

Paloma was my best friend since I was 11 years old. She immigrated from Peru and her parents didn't speak English. They became my parents. She became my life. We were inseparable until I moved away at 17.

Paloma and I

I had to sell all the goats, leave Paloma and move to California for my Mom's military job. I moved into Ore Grande, California. My high school graduating class had 17 students. I didn't get along with the party kids at the school. I didn't drink alchohol until I was 21 and barely ever drink it today.

I took a break and earned a scholarship to the Yosemite Institute Summer Field Research Program. Again I learned about environmentalism and performed my own research project on trees and altitude changes.

Hugging trees to measure their circumference

Tye a military brat from Georgia, Jamie a foreign exchange student from Germany and I were on the basketball team and in student government together.

My best friends certainly had an effect on me. I was liberal but also confused. My goat business had taught me to love capitalism. My work in the FFA made me hate regulation. My political views were so conflicting that I simply put them on the back burner and focused on what I could do in my community right then to help.

In that tiny town in California where I only had two friends: I found a sanctuary. I played at an airsoft field called Desert Fox Airsoft every weekend for two years.

Me in my airsoft gear.

This is when I founded Mutiny Shop at 18-years-old. I worked part-time as Subway, went to college, and worked at Mutiny Shop for two years. In college I majored in Environmental Conservation and minored in Graphic Design. I made very little money and was on the verge of homelessness at the time. I couldn't even afford to buy a car for two years. When Mutiny Shop took off, I bought my first car, with cash. I will never be prouder than I was that day!

Me with my first car.

Again my political views began to get more conflicting. Over the years of working at Mutiny Shop I started questioning opinions that had been solidified in my high school years like climate change, affirmative action, and rape accusations.

My airsoft friends were staunch republicans but my best friend Paloma moved from Utah to me in Las Vegas. She went to an arts school for illustration and animation. (She is the best artist in the world - the world just doesn't know it yet). Where she became best friends with amazing liberal kids that I loved as my friends too.

Again I was caught in the middle with conflicting opinions on everything. I couldn't discuss any of my opinions on Facebook because one half of my friends would always be offended if my opinion leaned either right or left.

So I didn't focus on politics. I started training jiu jitsu and muay thai. I loved it so much I would train 2-6 hours a day. I was best friends of all races, creeds and political beliefs. Focused entirely on helping each other become the best, with no desire to discuss anything either than fighting.

My coach and I.

My sponsorship gear!

Then I got sick. Really sick. I don't like to go into the details of what my illness is, but I couldn't function for the first year of treatment. I still haven't been able to train three years later, so I lost my closest fighting friends. My boyfriend and co-founder left.

When it was just starting - before it fell apart.

Finally, 8 months in my "family" was upset that I was in the hospital for two weeks again. They took my service dog Kimber, which had been with me every single minute of every day since she was a puppy (for two years) to the pound. She was even in the hospital ER with me but my family came and took her without my consent. Which was also illegal, but I'm not going to sue my own family.

They lied and claimed to be the owner so they wouldn't look for me which is against the law. They legally stole my dog. I lost her forever.

They called me the day after I was admitted to the hospital that she was in the pound. I was trapped and couldn't do anything about it. It was the hardest two weeks of my life: alone and heart broken in the hospital.

Believe me, I did everything I could to get her back: the media, the police, etc but after an adoption is finalized there is nothing you can do. Paloma was busy with school, she was my only friend. My Mom even told my roommate to take my two cats to the pound too, but he refused.

After that happened my family stopped talking to me. I still wanted them in my life then, but they were done with me. They said I took too much energy to deal with, when I had only been sick six months and they were in another state so it actually effected them very little either than short phone calls. I never had much of a blood related family anyways.

I practically raised my first niece Emma. I spent more time with her constant crying as a baby than her Mom did. I have thousands of photos and videos to prove it. My other niece Jace, I didn't get to see as much of because I moved to California when she was born and Emma was four.

Emma and Jace

Five years later I was with them constantly again because they had moved to Las Vegas. Then I got sick. My sister moved to Texas. I have seen them three times in the two years since. That hurts me more than anything else.

Taking them to their first horse back riding lessons for Christmas.

While I was sick someone attacked Mutiny Shop's SEO. First they removed our SSL, prompting Google to label our site a security risk. Then they added 200,000 spammy backlinks which got us completely delisted from Google. We were the first result for the search term "Custom Patches" and now we aren't on Google at all. Sales dropped 70% and we had to let go 70% of our employees. I'm doing a lot to recover but we're still on the verge of bankruptcy.

It could go either way.

Despite all of that, I managed to find the love of my life and eloped last year. Through him I finally in a real family. Full of the siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and Fathers I never had.

While I was sick my interest in politics and world events exploded. I watched thousands of youtube videos, read many books, and political elections gained my full attention. Now, at 25-years-old, I am finally ready to talk.

I have my biases, but I also consider my self bipartisan. I'm not going to list the details of my beliefs, they can be discovered in the other blog posts I have written and will write.