waywardclam
01-27-04, 03:25 PM
So I'm feeling overwhelmed by my inability to cope financially.
My wife has a good paying full time job, PLUS a part time job. I have two part time jobs, both of which have crappy hours and essentially minimum wage.
I wouldn't feel bad about this except that we have about $13000 in debt that is my fault - student loans, which paid for my education which I dropped out of due to ADD.
Because I haven't been able to remember to pay the student loan payments, and often haven't been able to, they have gone to collections and ruined my credit rating.
Now I can't get another student loan, so I can't go back to school.
Since I can't go back to school, I can't get a high paying job to pay down my student loan.
The only high paying jobs available to someone with my lack of experience are intolerable to me (i.e. tree planting, high pressure sales, etc.), and I can honestly say that most of the reason for that is my ADD.
I also can't get a full time job at minimum wage, because then we need a babysitter, which is so *******g expensive these days that I'd be losing money overall.
And we can't get daycare because I don't have a full time weekday job. And I can't get a full time weekday job, because I don't have daycare...
Now perhaps drugs or psychotherapy or neurofeedback might "cure" my symptoms enough for me to work at one of these jobs--but I can't afford any of these "cures"! Even the Wellbutrin I am taking now seems to do little for me, and it drains too much $ out of our accounts...
So I sit here, scraping by, eating out of dented cans from the food bank my parents run, while my poor wife is working herself into the ground to try and support the family.
This is why I so desperately want to finish a novel. It seems to me like one of the few things that could theoretically end this downward spiral I am in. An advance would go a long ways to destroying our debt, and if I became successful, then neither of us would have to work as hard, or perhaps not at all...
It's a slim hope. But it's all I have to work with right now, other than lottery tickets.
Of course, this doesn't pay the bills in the meantime, nor does it satisfy the collection agencies that are getting more and more aggressive. I also suspect my wife has panic disorder. If they get her on the phone, or if she opens an aggressive letter from one of them, that will set her off...
And in the meantime we are setting a horrible example for our boy, and are unable to give him the special care he needs as an ADD child. As far as I am concerned, he NEEDS to be in martial arts right now. But its another $100 a month that we can't spend when we struggle to pay the rent every month.
We can't move anywhere cheaper--we're damn lucky to be where we are today. To find a cheaper place we'd have to be in a closet with a bathroom.
Our car insurance is about to skyrocket.
We could give up the Internet, or cable TV. We will probably have to do just that. But I HATE to think what life is going to be like around here for me and my ADD child if neither of us can watch TV or go on the Internet.
Now I can't imagine I am the only one in this sort of situation. In fact, I KNOW I am not, because I help out at my parents' food bank, and people there have bigger families, poorer conditions to live in, more bills, more kids, one or both parents unemployed, medical bills....
WHY doesn't our society find more ways to help people get out of these downward spirals?
I know that if I had a decent high paying job, I could find a way to keep it, pay my debts down, pay taxes responsibly, and find more time and money to give to charity...
I have brilliant ideas and contributions I could make, were I an executive somewhere. I could save companies millions, and make them millions more. But because I am trapped in this downward spiral I will never be given the chance to ever see these ideas come to fruition.
And even given all this... I think I could still succeed at writing, or something else, relatively quickly. But my family and my problems demand so much of my time and attention that all that is left over is an hour or two every day. I can get around that by not sleeping, but that only puts off the inevitable...
And all of this increases the pressure slowly... until I screw up at work... screw up at home... screw up my hobbies...
Which increases the pressure slowly...
Ad nauseum
Ad infinitum.
I don't want to bore or depress anyone. And I am not looking for advice here. But several people asked me if I wanted someone to ***** at and let off all of my steam.
So here it is.
My wife has a good paying full time job, PLUS a part time job. I have two part time jobs, both of which have crappy hours and essentially minimum wage.
I wouldn't feel bad about this except that we have about $13000 in debt that is my fault - student loans, which paid for my education which I dropped out of due to ADD.
Because I haven't been able to remember to pay the student loan payments, and often haven't been able to, they have gone to collections and ruined my credit rating.
Now I can't get another student loan, so I can't go back to school.
Since I can't go back to school, I can't get a high paying job to pay down my student loan.
The only high paying jobs available to someone with my lack of experience are intolerable to me (i.e. tree planting, high pressure sales, etc.), and I can honestly say that most of the reason for that is my ADD.
I also can't get a full time job at minimum wage, because then we need a babysitter, which is so *******g expensive these days that I'd be losing money overall.
And we can't get daycare because I don't have a full time weekday job. And I can't get a full time weekday job, because I don't have daycare...
Now perhaps drugs or psychotherapy or neurofeedback might "cure" my symptoms enough for me to work at one of these jobs--but I can't afford any of these "cures"! Even the Wellbutrin I am taking now seems to do little for me, and it drains too much $ out of our accounts...
So I sit here, scraping by, eating out of dented cans from the food bank my parents run, while my poor wife is working herself into the ground to try and support the family.
This is why I so desperately want to finish a novel. It seems to me like one of the few things that could theoretically end this downward spiral I am in. An advance would go a long ways to destroying our debt, and if I became successful, then neither of us would have to work as hard, or perhaps not at all...
It's a slim hope. But it's all I have to work with right now, other than lottery tickets.
Of course, this doesn't pay the bills in the meantime, nor does it satisfy the collection agencies that are getting more and more aggressive. I also suspect my wife has panic disorder. If they get her on the phone, or if she opens an aggressive letter from one of them, that will set her off...
And in the meantime we are setting a horrible example for our boy, and are unable to give him the special care he needs as an ADD child. As far as I am concerned, he NEEDS to be in martial arts right now. But its another $100 a month that we can't spend when we struggle to pay the rent every month.
We can't move anywhere cheaper--we're damn lucky to be where we are today. To find a cheaper place we'd have to be in a closet with a bathroom.
Our car insurance is about to skyrocket.
We could give up the Internet, or cable TV. We will probably have to do just that. But I HATE to think what life is going to be like around here for me and my ADD child if neither of us can watch TV or go on the Internet.
Now I can't imagine I am the only one in this sort of situation. In fact, I KNOW I am not, because I help out at my parents' food bank, and people there have bigger families, poorer conditions to live in, more bills, more kids, one or both parents unemployed, medical bills....
WHY doesn't our society find more ways to help people get out of these downward spirals?
I know that if I had a decent high paying job, I could find a way to keep it, pay my debts down, pay taxes responsibly, and find more time and money to give to charity...
I have brilliant ideas and contributions I could make, were I an executive somewhere. I could save companies millions, and make them millions more. But because I am trapped in this downward spiral I will never be given the chance to ever see these ideas come to fruition.
And even given all this... I think I could still succeed at writing, or something else, relatively quickly. But my family and my problems demand so much of my time and attention that all that is left over is an hour or two every day. I can get around that by not sleeping, but that only puts off the inevitable...
And all of this increases the pressure slowly... until I screw up at work... screw up at home... screw up my hobbies...
Which increases the pressure slowly...
Ad nauseum
Ad infinitum.
I don't want to bore or depress anyone. And I am not looking for advice here. But several people asked me if I wanted someone to ***** at and let off all of my steam.
So here it is.