Given how difficult my life is at this point, I find it hard not to regret the decisions I’ve made that got me here. The huge, overwhelming, contrasting positives I always think about, though, are my kids. I have a 5-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, and they are probably the most amazing people I’ve ever met. They surprise me every day.
There is so much drama surrounding how those two ended up in the world, but I can’t imagine my life without them. That said, most other difficult and often wrong-headed decisions I’ve made have not had such shiny silver linings.
I’m not currently working. Coronavirus is an appealing excuse, but I was already failing in that department before social distancing amped up. I was very occasionally substitute teaching, and that’s obviously off the table now. I’ve never been good at working from home, and it has been such a struggle to set something up.
I need almost complete financial support from my family. I’m too distracted by my ongoing custody suit with me ex to focus on much of anything. I need to apply for public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps. I have no excuses for not pursuing those things. I think I’m going to look over that once I finish publishing this.
Even writing this blog entry seems like the sort of thing I’ll regret later. I may have already said this in a previous post, but keeping things to myself is exhausting. It has come back to bite me so many times - being open, honest, and vulnerable - but I want to be the sort of person I wish we all were.
For me there’s this constant balance between advocating for myself and doing what’s right, and appealing to authority figures or submitting to social contrivances to survive. I will never trust authority figures or believe that arbitrary societal expectations are intrinsically valid. Any reluctant acquiescence is always strategic. But I’m so bad at being strategic in a practical way. I don’t understand people who want power and responsibility. I just want to spend time with my kids, read, write, create art, socialize, engage in physical activity. It is so hard for money to motivate me.
When I try to work I just end up getting discouraged and give up. Yes, capitalism is an immoral system. But once again, that doesn’t change the reality of the things I need to do to subsist, whether they are a positive model of how we should live our lives or not. It’s just hard for me to do anything if I don’t think it’s going to help improve my situation, especially when I’ve currently been able to have those needs met without working consistently.
I’m more stubborn than I usually realize, though I often find it difficult to behave in appropriate ways, even when I’m trying. When I’m asked to do something, I do it in the way I was asked, and insist I be given more specific instructions if the end result is not the one desired. I don’t try to search for deeper meaning or intent. I need other people to drop the polite and vague act and just tell me what they want. I say that, but I’m not always good at it myself. I feel like I need to act that way because it seems like the way I’m supposed to. Be the change, I guess.
I may have already written about this, but I need to be myself more, even when it’s potentially damaging in the short-term. It’s just this mix of respecting my identity but also avoiding the hassle of pushback when I don’t follow the rules. I am so bad at understanding the perceptions of others that when I try to base my actions around that I nearly always fail.
I’m limiting myself to blog writing between 9 and 10am now, so we’ll see what sort of quality that time constraint provides. I have this habit of burying myself in it and rewriting and revising throughout the day, leaving and coming back to it, but I have got to develop better time management.
There is so much drama surrounding how those two ended up in the world, but I can’t imagine my life without them. That said, most other difficult and often wrong-headed decisions I’ve made have not had such shiny silver linings.
I’m not currently working. Coronavirus is an appealing excuse, but I was already failing in that department before social distancing amped up. I was very occasionally substitute teaching, and that’s obviously off the table now. I’ve never been good at working from home, and it has been such a struggle to set something up.
I need almost complete financial support from my family. I’m too distracted by my ongoing custody suit with me ex to focus on much of anything. I need to apply for public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps. I have no excuses for not pursuing those things. I think I’m going to look over that once I finish publishing this.
Even writing this blog entry seems like the sort of thing I’ll regret later. I may have already said this in a previous post, but keeping things to myself is exhausting. It has come back to bite me so many times - being open, honest, and vulnerable - but I want to be the sort of person I wish we all were.
For me there’s this constant balance between advocating for myself and doing what’s right, and appealing to authority figures or submitting to social contrivances to survive. I will never trust authority figures or believe that arbitrary societal expectations are intrinsically valid. Any reluctant acquiescence is always strategic. But I’m so bad at being strategic in a practical way. I don’t understand people who want power and responsibility. I just want to spend time with my kids, read, write, create art, socialize, engage in physical activity. It is so hard for money to motivate me.
When I try to work I just end up getting discouraged and give up. Yes, capitalism is an immoral system. But once again, that doesn’t change the reality of the things I need to do to subsist, whether they are a positive model of how we should live our lives or not. It’s just hard for me to do anything if I don’t think it’s going to help improve my situation, especially when I’ve currently been able to have those needs met without working consistently.
I’m more stubborn than I usually realize, though I often find it difficult to behave in appropriate ways, even when I’m trying. When I’m asked to do something, I do it in the way I was asked, and insist I be given more specific instructions if the end result is not the one desired. I don’t try to search for deeper meaning or intent. I need other people to drop the polite and vague act and just tell me what they want. I say that, but I’m not always good at it myself. I feel like I need to act that way because it seems like the way I’m supposed to. Be the change, I guess.
I may have already written about this, but I need to be myself more, even when it’s potentially damaging in the short-term. It’s just this mix of respecting my identity but also avoiding the hassle of pushback when I don’t follow the rules. I am so bad at understanding the perceptions of others that when I try to base my actions around that I nearly always fail.
I’m limiting myself to blog writing between 9 and 10am now, so we’ll see what sort of quality that time constraint provides. I have this habit of burying myself in it and rewriting and revising throughout the day, leaving and coming back to it, but I have got to develop better time management.
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