Warning: autobiography and emotions ahead, I have to disclaimer this due to the anxiety I will describe later, or else I will feel I’m wasting someone’s time. Thank you for understanding.
From early on I learned to hate money and especially business transactions regarding debt or interest. It felt very, very wrong. I early on chose to take the mantle of “never give a loan if you will be perturbed or think less of someone should they not be able to repay it, and if you do need to take, then pay it forward tenfold. Most of all, never expect them to thank you, but it’s nice when it happens.”.
Through much of my life this worked out very well. I gave and I gave and I gave. I offered quickly if someone seemed in need. I made a great number of friends and longtime companions from this mentality.
What happened was that when the fortunes turned, and my life began to spiral downwards, my hedges got hedged and then those hedges got liquidated, and I found myself leveraging emotional debt rather than “true” debt. This also came from a spoiled childhood; I still feel ashamed for what I took from my grandfather, as he lived his entire life like that; it’s not until they’re gone you realize how selfish you had been when on the receiving end of gifts and love. I have been forced to ask for help about three or four times since then. Every time I was absolutely ashamed of myself for having to do so, despite both 1. the people I asked were completely willing to do so not for 2, but because they loved me in whatever form, and 2. knowing how much I had done for them in the past.
2 was worse. 2 reminded me that I wasn’t asking for genuine help, I was expecting. And expecting is not how I want transactions to be. I’m sure (and know) that many came to me expecting, and I obliged them before they asked, because the attitude is very blatant. I don’t mind. I knew I was doing it because I wanted to, not because I felt guilty. I had gone through that rodeo and I would never feel guilt-tripped again. This has caused me some additional harm in the form of split situations and empathy, but that’s a different issue.
2 wasn’t always financial. It was often emotional, or therapeutic. Before my life became a stressball I was an amazing listener. Now I’m hungry. I have to figure out where to be unlucky next. Motivation fails me. My cheerful price is very low, but not sustainable. As my experience and patience become more and more eroded by time and torture, and the number of individuals willing to give me a cheerful price become fewer and fewer, finally, in the midst of this pandemic, I found myself alone.
Not completely, and not fully so. But alone, for the first time in a long time. It was what I feared the most. But...
I feel happy this way, though I struggle to earn the money to survive, and the frustration only makes the impatience more lethal. I’m in a curious place where I can see my own desperation and understand its futility, yet in the moment, the exhaustion takes over. I have tried to be submissive to get along; I would rather starve. How I got here was seeking freedom. I found it, but I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to get anywhere from zero. I get confused when I read my resume, because I can’t understand how I would get turned away to even clerical jobs. I can discuss the art of keeping and sharing secrets for hours; but that is not a marketable skill.
What is my cheerful price? I just don’t know if I have one anymore. But I’m still alive, and I’m still here. Why I’m here precisely this evening is because I was out in the backyard from the home I rent a room in trying to smoke a six year old cigarette. I don’t even smoke. It was an old pack from an overseas deployment to Qatar that had two left, and a lot of memories. I still sorta feel sick. But I stood outside, and reminded myself perhaps I should try a utilitarian go at utilitarianism, rather than trying to tie in some measure of it into that prior ethical standpoint I established. Perhaps they do not work together, without the capital to support not caring at all how much of it you lose. I feel incredibly undervalued. I feel like others value me well, but my performance is leagues under where it should be. I know I have lost some intuitive edge I had when I was younger, but I have earned in back far better in experience and perspective.
Maybe I feel I made too many mistakes and don’t deserve a cheerful price, so I keep taking the painful one. Maybe that’s a good definition of depression.
Maybe I’m afraid that if I ask for my cheerful price, they will get offended, or laugh. That might be a good definition of anxiety.
At some point I decided only I can give my cheerful price, now. Otherwise one of those two will stop me in my tracks before it’s offered. And to do that, I have to get back to work. Futures open shortly. I will be re-reading the sequences again to regain my pride in my search to not be more correct than everyone else, but at least less wrong.
Warning: autobiography and emotions ahead, I have to disclaimer this due to the anxiety I will describe later, or else I will feel I’m wasting someone’s time. Thank you for understanding.
From early on I learned to hate money and especially business transactions regarding debt or interest. It felt very, very wrong. I early on chose to take the mantle of “never give a loan if you will be perturbed or think less of someone should they not be able to repay it, and if you do need to take, then pay it forward tenfold. Most of all, never expect them to thank you, but it’s nice when it happens.”.
Through much of my life this worked out very well. I gave and I gave and I gave. I offered quickly if someone seemed in need. I made a great number of friends and longtime companions from this mentality.
What happened was that when the fortunes turned, and my life began to spiral downwards, my hedges got hedged and then those hedges got liquidated, and I found myself leveraging emotional debt rather than “true” debt. This also came from a spoiled childhood; I still feel ashamed for what I took from my grandfather, as he lived his entire life like that; it’s not until they’re gone you realize how selfish you had been when on the receiving end of gifts and love. I have been forced to ask for help about three or four times since then. Every time I was absolutely ashamed of myself for having to do so, despite both 1. the people I asked were completely willing to do so not for 2, but because they loved me in whatever form, and 2. knowing how much I had done for them in the past.
2 was worse. 2 reminded me that I wasn’t asking for genuine help, I was expecting. And expecting is not how I want transactions to be. I’m sure (and know) that many came to me expecting, and I obliged them before they asked, because the attitude is very blatant. I don’t mind. I knew I was doing it because I wanted to, not because I felt guilty. I had gone through that rodeo and I would never feel guilt-tripped again. This has caused me some additional harm in the form of split situations and empathy, but that’s a different issue.
2 wasn’t always financial. It was often emotional, or therapeutic. Before my life became a stressball I was an amazing listener. Now I’m hungry. I have to figure out where to be unlucky next. Motivation fails me. My cheerful price is very low, but not sustainable. As my experience and patience become more and more eroded by time and torture, and the number of individuals willing to give me a cheerful price become fewer and fewer, finally, in the midst of this pandemic, I found myself alone.
Not completely, and not fully so. But alone, for the first time in a long time. It was what I feared the most. But...
I feel happy this way, though I struggle to earn the money to survive, and the frustration only makes the impatience more lethal. I’m in a curious place where I can see my own desperation and understand its futility, yet in the moment, the exhaustion takes over. I have tried to be submissive to get along; I would rather starve. How I got here was seeking freedom. I found it, but I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to get anywhere from zero. I get confused when I read my resume, because I can’t understand how I would get turned away to even clerical jobs. I can discuss the art of keeping and sharing secrets for hours; but that is not a marketable skill.
What is my cheerful price? I just don’t know if I have one anymore. But I’m still alive, and I’m still here. Why I’m here precisely this evening is because I was out in the backyard from the home I rent a room in trying to smoke a six year old cigarette. I don’t even smoke. It was an old pack from an overseas deployment to Qatar that had two left, and a lot of memories. I still sorta feel sick. But I stood outside, and reminded myself perhaps I should try a utilitarian go at utilitarianism, rather than trying to tie in some measure of it into that prior ethical standpoint I established. Perhaps they do not work together, without the capital to support not caring at all how much of it you lose. I feel incredibly undervalued. I feel like others value me well, but my performance is leagues under where it should be. I know I have lost some intuitive edge I had when I was younger, but I have earned in back far better in experience and perspective.
Maybe I feel I made too many mistakes and don’t deserve a cheerful price, so I keep taking the painful one. Maybe that’s a good definition of depression.
Maybe I’m afraid that if I ask for my cheerful price, they will get offended, or laugh. That might be a good definition of anxiety.
At some point I decided only I can give my cheerful price, now. Otherwise one of those two will stop me in my tracks before it’s offered. And to do that, I have to get back to work. Futures open shortly. I will be re-reading the sequences again to regain my pride in my search to not be more correct than everyone else, but at least less wrong.