Financials

Okay, here's the deal.

My family and I have been pushed to the pointy end of fiscal disaster.  During the Dot.Com bust, we lost all our savings and racked up a pile of unsecured debt.  We managed to keep the house, though.  After that, we spent several years paying off the debt.  In the spring of 2009, we were down to only a couple of thousand dollars of debt.  Then, more shit happened, which resulted in us moving from Oregon to California to find work.  We sold the house in Oregon, bought a house in California and kept slugging on.  That was the major mistake, I think.  The cost of living in California is remarkably *more* than it was in Oregon.

However.  Here we are.  In all the various job issues over the last 2 years, we have had to slowly whittle away at what little savings we had.  Medical insurance went away, and we've had to buy privately, at the cost of over $2K a month.

We've spent the last year, every time something goes wrong, trimming expenses and recalculating that we should be okay, "if nothing else goes wrong".  Well, things keep going wrong and I don't imagine that process is going to change much.

Today, we are unemployed, with less than one months expenses in financial cushion.  If a job doesn't come, and right soon, we're facing foreclosure, probably some time in the spring.  We can't sell the house, because we have no where to go, we don't have enough money to put down first/last/deposit on a rental somewhere.  We might be underwater anyway.  Oh, yeah, and it needs a new roof, to the tune of maybe $18K.  Gah.

Yesterday, I called the mortgage company (BofA) to discuss this mess.  They will have a "modification" team contact me soon.  We have spoken to some programs that should offer help; Green Path Debt Solutions and KeepYourHomeCalifornia.Org are the two biggies, among others.  The first one advised my husband to look for a job.  Du-oh.  The second one can't help us until *after* the unemployment checks start arriving.  We won't qualify until we have *more* income than we do today.  Eh?  So those things are out there.  We're doing all the right and responsible things.

So, the focus of this blog is changing.  I intend to publicly record the process of foreclosure, if and when it comes down to that.  People don't talk about these things.  I am inspired in this by my friend, Jay Lake, who blogs very thoroughly about his experience with cancer and chemo.

Still Alive

Overall, 2011 had some really sucky bits.  But, I need to change my self description.  I'm not depressed about California anymore.  I don't think I'm depressed at all anymore.  Now I just have to figure out how to taper off the anti-depressant that psychiatrist has me on.  I googled how to get off of it, and found many many scary stories.  Damn.  I should have googled it before I took it.

Anyway, like it says, still alive.

Thinking a lot about getting some real training/education about witchy stuff.  I'm really tired of feeling powerless and would like to change that.

Better Living Through Chemistry

I gave up and gave in.  I went and asked for, and got, anti-depressants.  I got them from my nice internist, and have an appointment in A MONTH to see a prescribing psychiatrist.

Now, I hate and despise anti-depressants.  I probably shouldn't, but I do anyway.  They are fabulous drugs, they help me climb out of the Pit Of Despair and feel vaguely normal.  Whatever that is.  However, I have had a couple of prescribers push me into taking them "forever", as a prophylactic measure.  This does not work out well for me.  After taking one for awhile, I get this strange sort of *click* in my head, where I know I'm done.  If I continue taking them for too long after that place, I get to another place, one where I have very few emotions at all.  I call it FLAT.  It's not numb, I know numb.  It's some other place, where I Just Don't Care About Anything.  It would be scary, if I was capable of feeling scared.  I guess it's intellectually scary.  To quote Leonard Nemoy, I Am Not Spock, because it's not like I'm any more logical than usual for me, I'm just emotionless.  Whatever it is, it is Not Good.

So, I will do this druggy thing, for maybe 6 months, until the click happens.  I have explained this to the internist, and I will explain it to the prescribing psychiatrist.  When I am done, I will take advice on how to taper off safely, but I will indeed stop.  That place of feeling so flat?  I'm not going there again.  Too dangerous.

Gwan Ta Kawlidge, Wair Thair Iz Nawt Privacy

This week I managed to convince the local community college that I actually do live here and qualify for the in state tuition prices.  I also completed a FAFSA and have an appointment scheduled with the nice people down at the counseling center to talk about what I want to do when I grow up.  (like *that* is likely!)  The FAFSA is about financial aide, which I presume I won't get any of, but it's part of the dang process, can't skip any steps, it only upsets the bureaucrats!  So now the IRS is involved.  Argh.  It's probably all fine, but all these things want my Social Security Number.  And the borderline rude person behind the counter at the college the other day gave me eyebrow when I wanted a student ID number that WASN'T my SSN, even though the paperwork all says that they are HAPPY to do that very thing.  I guess I'm some kind of unnatural Luddite, gingerly angling for privacy in an increasingly "transparent" world.

In theory, they also have my transcripts from the other place, and I may need to take placement tests.  The chances of my needing Bonehead English are remote, but I apparently need to demonstrate that to somebody.

In the meantime, I might take a class during the short summer session.  I would claim it was to jump start my brain, but look at what I'm considering:

There is a class titled, simply enough, "Chocolate" and is further described in the catalog in the following manner; "Studies the history and manufacturing of chocolate as well as the practical uses and techniques in working with dark, white, and milk chocolate."

Yes, this is a For Credit class.  Admittedly, it's only ONE credit.  However, it probably doesn't have much at all to do with my *brain*.  

Thank You Strunk & White

My counselor wanted to know if I kept a journal.  She said something to the effect that because I read so much, I should be able to write.  (she actually said that I'm "well read", which I had to edit out here, I just couldn't face it.)

While when I am inspired, I think I probably write reasonably well, I usually don't have much of any substance to say.  I know a couple of "real" writers, people who *work* at it and get published and *paid* and things.  I'm not a writer, not in that fashion.  I certainly don't have any stories beating on the walls of the inside of my head, hammering to get out. 

Back in the day, in various schools, I got good at padding.  Five pages on <insert some boring topic name here> when I only have three facts?  No problem, I am your huckleberry.  Instead of stories, I have marketing.  And I'll be the first to admit that I like words and phrases with curlicues and filigree and lace trimmings.  I'll come all over Old British Novel stylistically, which is just wrong.  Sigh.  So, out in the real world, when self-editing, I have to cut and cut and simplify like mad.  Strunk and White would be pleased.  At least, I hope so.

I am a reader who is capable of occasionally making it go the other way.  Crafting something out of words feels immensely complicated to me.  It's a variation on the smorgasbord problem.  There are so many fabulous words and you can put them in almost any order.  It's intimidating. 




Note - I do this blog just to put things somewhere, to try and bleed off the steam as it were. 

Duty Is Another Four Letter Word

Well, I fell into another hole.  Or the same one.  Or something.  My analogy is not working well for me today.  Of course, very little is.

I'm a mess.

The Law of Attraction business that says that somehow one has chosen the life one has?  That's really aggravating.  I don't know how to un-choose, or choose differently, not without stepping all over other people.  And, of course, I'll always choose to damage myself before I will damage other people.  Well, maybe not always, but when it's folks I care about?  In a bloody heartbeat.

I suppose if this is a blog it should have a topic, and be erudite and reach conclusions.  They are mini essays after all.  But I'm circling around inside my own head.  I have these obligations, these duties.  I don't know how to make them palatable, and I don't know how to get out of them honorably.

Duty.  There's a concept.  Maybe a whole essay, right there.

Wagons

And The Falling Off Thereof:

So, I got close to firing my counselor.  Because things were going okay, not because she did anything wrong.  But I've decided to not do that.  I want instead to do some real work, to maybe deal with and/or fix some of the damn laziness or whatever it is that keeps me sitting on my hands.  While reaching "no longer miserable" is excellent and a relief and all that, I should not settle for it.

If I waste my life not doing what I want to be doing, doing what I think I *should* be doing, waiting for Calgon to come and take me away, and not only give me my hearts desire, but divine it for me in the first place,  I really and truly deserve what I get, which will be whatever random chance brings.  (delayed run on sentence alert)

I don't know what, specifically, it is that I want out of life.  I never have.  I could always point at things and holler, "NOT THIS!", but that's about all.  I have always presumed I'd know it when it happened.  I wonder if I'm wrong about that.  So, I have consumerist desires common to many.  (mine are more on the travel end of the spectrum than the big house/new car end, but you know what I mean)  I don't know what they mask.  I suppose that I don't know who I am, if I don't know what I want.

Grumble.