4 ms·

Thank you for the response. I always appreciate well meaning people but the problem is there has never been any truly actionable advice. People tend to react on

Thank you for the response. I always appreciate well meaning people but the problem is there has never been any truly actionable advice. People tend to react one of two ways when you tell them "that hasn't worked"...either they retreat into silence or they attack out of defensiveness. This is universal in my experience no matter how I approach it. The only way to avoid one of these is to say "thank you I will try it" to make them feel good then retreat yourself. I have never met anyone who has survived in this situation who didn't have lots of help...either social support, family support, or both. I have none of that thus my hopelessness. I am clinging to Maslow's bottom rungs and expected to somehow "self actualize" nonetheless. I hate my life, hate where I live (country and location) and see no future. I have asked for help directly and clearly for over a decade and gotten ignored or blamed. Anytime I do ask for that help the results are ALWAYS the same...most people ignore, some get angry out of guilt or bother or whatever and attack, a handful offer contacts and commiseration and maybe one of those people actually respond but end up disappearing after giving me standard self help advice from books or forums that is always inapplicable or out of context. It's why at this point I just complain when I speak of things as I have learned asking doesn't change anything. I need practical, concrete, consistent help. If I had that I believe I could get some semblance of a life back and contribute...but after this long and things getting so much worse I am giving up as it's shown to be pointless. This country and culture is so anti everything I need and won't change in my lifetime if ever...and I cannot get myself established anywhere better for me. Knowing it's practically possible but I cannot access it has ruined me and I am just about done.

nkoren 9y ago
I keep thinking about your situation. This is something that I really care about. In the long term I hope to shape society to deal better with these scenarios; in the short term, I'm living in a flatshare working on my startup for less than minimum wage, so capacity to do anything tangible is frustratingly limited. I've got a couple of dear friends in similar situations to yours. So far they're making do, because they've gotten lucky and found sheds in the back yards of sympathetic friends that they could live in long-term (or equivalent scenarios). Absence that kind of informal safety-net, their situations would be significantly more dire. I'm in the UK with long-term health issues that the NHS has been a godsend for -- but my visa status is uncertain, and being bounced back to America is always a risk. Health would be a major concern should that happen, and income concerns would follow shortly thereafter. My last-ditch backup plan, in that case, is to go mostly off-grid and move back to Arcosanti (www.arcosanti.org), where I (partially) grew up. The cost-of-living there would be wildly reduced, making financial survival possible unless my mobility/pain became 100% untenable. Maybe something like that would be viable for you?
- hestipod 9y ago
  I could never survive in even less robust conditions. I need certain things, certain services, medical care that requires long time to deal with etc. I have reduced my life to the bare minimum survivable for me in the name of preserving money and it's not enough. Any "advice" requires reducing more or suffering more either through subtraction or addition. I can't live like that. I had some plan to write a post here in AskHN to lay it out and maybe some miracle idea or plan would result but I finally realized I have done that sort of thing repeatedly over the years and the predictable results always take rather than give so there is no point. Anyone I connect with in private and spend energy engaging and explaining things to in depth just repeats the same script of things everyone things you can and should do and I end up more depressed and hopeless and they end up disappearing either outright or after some lecture and victim blaming. I know why they do it, to preserve a sense of security for themselves, but it drains me nonetheless. I can't get what I really need in this place and can't realistically establish anywhere I could. Hope has gasped its last breath.
  - nkoren 9y ago
    I get that. Unless you explain the situation to me in detail, I definitely won't have a useful solution for you. And even after you explain the situation to me in detail, I probably won't have a useful solution for you. This would be a lot of emotional labour for an interaction where the median expected value seems very low, and the mode is zero. Totally get why this isn't something you'd want to go through repeatedly. (Actually, describing it in this way reminds me of pitching a book to a publisher, or a startup to an investor. Each pitch takes a really significant amount of energy, and you have to be prepared to do it many dozens of times with completely null results -- and with no guarantee that there will ever be anything other than a null result. This breaks a lot of peoples' spirits. I know a handful of brilliant writers with unpublished novels sitting on their shelves, because they just couldn't keep going through the pitch-rejection cycle. As writers, they are probably superior to, say, Agatha Christie, who endured five years of nonstop rejection before making her first sale. But they are not as stubborn, and therein lies the rub.) So, yeah, I understand. The only thing I can counter with is that even if you feel like you've explored the whole possibility-space, you haven't. Nobody has -- ever. There may be solutions for you; there always may be solutions for you; the question is how to maintain the core internal energy to keep searching for them. I don't have any super-brilliant advice in that regard. Only thing I can offer -- and you've probably already gotten this plenty of times; apologies if so -- is that meditation can be extraordinarily helpful for this kind of thing. Not immediately helpful -- the benefits can take weeks or months to fully kick in -- but simply being in touch with your breathing, and training your mind to be free of the cycles of worry which it otherwise is (necessarily) consumed by, can help you find that core of energy if it exists. In general, if you are breathing: it exists. And even if it is doesn't, meditation can help you look at the situation more dispassionately. What you don't want to do is to make permanent decisions out of exhaustions or frustrations which may not, in a bigger picture that you haven't been able to consider, be permanent. Final bit of advice: if you don't have the ability to meditate (physical or mental challenges can sometimes make this impossible), psilocybes can provide a viable shortcut for similar results. I definitely recommend not checking out until you've consulted with them first. What have you got to lose? :-)

nkoren 9y ago

I keep thinking about your situation. This is something that I really care about. In the long term I hope to shape society to deal better with these scenarios; in the short term, I'm living in a flatshare working on my startup for less than minimum wage, so capacity to do anything tangible is frustratingly limited. I've got a couple of dear friends in similar situations to yours. So far they're making do, because they've gotten lucky and found sheds in the back yards of sympathetic friends that they could live in long-term (or equivalent scenarios). Absence that kind of informal safety-net, their situations would be significantly more dire. I'm in the UK with long-term health issues that the NHS has been a godsend for -- but my visa status is uncertain, and being bounced back to America is always a risk. Health would be a major concern should that happen, and income concerns would follow shortly thereafter. My last-ditch backup plan, in that case, is to go mostly off-grid and move back to Arcosanti (www.arcosanti.org), where I (partially) grew up. The cost-of-living there would be wildly reduced, making financial survival possible unless my mobility/pain became 100% untenable. Maybe something like that would be viable for you?

hestipod 9y ago
I could never survive in even less robust conditions. I need certain things, certain services, medical care that requires long time to deal with etc. I have reduced my life to the bare minimum survivable for me in the name of preserving money and it's not enough. Any "advice" requires reducing more or suffering more either through subtraction or addition. I can't live like that. I had some plan to write a post here in AskHN to lay it out and maybe some miracle idea or plan would result but I finally realized I have done that sort of thing repeatedly over the years and the predictable results always take rather than give so there is no point. Anyone I connect with in private and spend energy engaging and explaining things to in depth just repeats the same script of things everyone things you can and should do and I end up more depressed and hopeless and they end up disappearing either outright or after some lecture and victim blaming. I know why they do it, to preserve a sense of security for themselves, but it drains me nonetheless. I can't get what I really need in this place and can't realistically establish anywhere I could. Hope has gasped its last breath.
- nkoren 9y ago
  I get that. Unless you explain the situation to me in detail, I definitely won't have a useful solution for you. And even after you explain the situation to me in detail, I probably won't have a useful solution for you. This would be a lot of emotional labour for an interaction where the median expected value seems very low, and the mode is zero. Totally get why this isn't something you'd want to go through repeatedly. (Actually, describing it in this way reminds me of pitching a book to a publisher, or a startup to an investor. Each pitch takes a really significant amount of energy, and you have to be prepared to do it many dozens of times with completely null results -- and with no guarantee that there will ever be anything other than a null result. This breaks a lot of peoples' spirits. I know a handful of brilliant writers with unpublished novels sitting on their shelves, because they just couldn't keep going through the pitch-rejection cycle. As writers, they are probably superior to, say, Agatha Christie, who endured five years of nonstop rejection before making her first sale. But they are not as stubborn, and therein lies the rub.) So, yeah, I understand. The only thing I can counter with is that even if you feel like you've explored the whole possibility-space, you haven't. Nobody has -- ever. There may be solutions for you; there always may be solutions for you; the question is how to maintain the core internal energy to keep searching for them. I don't have any super-brilliant advice in that regard. Only thing I can offer -- and you've probably already gotten this plenty of times; apologies if so -- is that meditation can be extraordinarily helpful for this kind of thing. Not immediately helpful -- the benefits can take weeks or months to fully kick in -- but simply being in touch with your breathing, and training your mind to be free of the cycles of worry which it otherwise is (necessarily) consumed by, can help you find that core of energy if it exists. In general, if you are breathing: it exists. And even if it is doesn't, meditation can help you look at the situation more dispassionately. What you don't want to do is to make permanent decisions out of exhaustions or frustrations which may not, in a bigger picture that you haven't been able to consider, be permanent. Final bit of advice: if you don't have the ability to meditate (physical or mental challenges can sometimes make this impossible), psilocybes can provide a viable shortcut for similar results. I definitely recommend not checking out until you've consulted with them first. What have you got to lose? :-)