4 ms·

I'd like to summarize what you speak of above. * Career: You have multiple degrees, lost work during COVID19, have Bellingcat certification, and have not been

I'd like to summarize what you speak of above. * Career: You have multiple degrees, lost work during COVID19, have Bellingcat certification, and have not been able to find any new employment, including physical low-level jobs like dishwasher. Savings: You indicate you were evicted from your home after your family withdrew support, but despite the phrase 'withdrew support', seem to also indicate they are funding the monthly bill for your current long-term hotel. You have no savings. Emotion: You have CPTSD, you feel anxious/fearful, you have low hope, and you feel betrayed and taken advantage of. Substance Abuse: you are drinking, but not using hard drugs. Health: Due to the blood sugar comment, I'm presuming you may have diabetes, or blood sugar issues. * I'm going to make some suggestions. I'm entering into a bit of a colder mode as I write this. Because of this, I want to pre-emptively say that I DO have empathy for you; it's just the place I go when I try to channel survivalism instincts. * PHYSICAL It is often easy to believe our body and our mind are separate; that our soul is different from our body. But alcohol is a depressant. Low blood sugar will make you sad and angry. In both those cases, those feelings will not feel like they come from your biology; you will feel you have perfect mental/emotional reasons to feel that way. So, for this first item: First, I would suggest at this point you vow to not take another drink, at least for now, and only resume at some far future point where your life is stable, where you feel well, and, most importantly, where you've talked the decision over with a mental health professional, to rule out any concern of addiction. This is not criticism of you; this is a survivalist decision. I had a friend literally drink himself to organ failure and die. Every person in the world will claim they can manage their illness. (Also, alcohol makes your blood sugar drop. Your liver stops working on producing glucose, as it gives higher priority to the poison (alcohol). As such, since it's not producing glucose any more, your blood sugar drops.) Second, go to a free health clinic, and have someone there test your A1C. It will tell you what your blood sugar's been over the last three months. I suspect your blood sugar isn't stable. If it's constantly too low, you will feel sad, shaky, angry, and you can't operate. If it's constantly too high, there's many other issues. If it's stable, then good. (As a side note, only AFTER you know that your blood sugar isn't too high -- and don't think that that's solely food-related -- most pharmacies sell little packs of glucose tablets about the size of a Life Savers roll, back near the pharmacy, as well as larger jars. For simply addressing the low sugar concern, they are useful.) CAREER To me, I see the lack of ability to get manual work like dishwashing as a flag that something may be wrong with how you are presenting yourself at job interviews. As such, if there is anyone who is the kind of person who is in the job-seeking or "day-to-day" world -- perhaps shelter management, perhaps somewhere else -- who can give you a honest opinion, try that. I have seen people who are well-meaning but who have one fatal flaw in how they present themselves that will torpedo any interview they go to. I am guessing you may have one, and you may simply need someone to tell you so you can correct it. You basically need to find someone who will let you do practice interviews and give you feedback -- and then take that feedback, with no ego. What you're used to - or what you think worked for you - isn't any longer, so you need to follow others' advice. After that, if I were in your circumstance, I'd look for this - perhaps a Walmart worker, perhaps a dishwasher, perhaps something - and work that job until you have a modicum of stability on a lower level than perhaps you're used to pre-layoff. Once you have a moderate income coming in, then start to look at your resume and your work in the field you wish to return to. Start applying to those, but do so when the pressure has been removed from you in terms of day-to-day living by your interim job. It will mean you will come across as more self-assured and relaxed at an interview, and these translate to positive impressions. INTERIM ADVICE Go to Reddit. Look at /r/povertyfinance, /r/assistance, /r/homeless, /r/almosthomeless, /r/food_pantry. Libraries have also become tremendous resources for those in dire need, including homeless. Go to your nearest one. Ask if they have resources they might suggest. Only in the reddest of states -- and maybe not even there, as most librarians are good everywhere -- might you encounter any unpleasant responses. MENTAL ATTITUDE As someone with /r/CPTSD herself (and yes, Reddit has a /r/CPTSD forum that is very good), as someone who has definitely despaired and been a month or two away from losing it all, I will tell you that I personally have experienced much (not all) of what you've gone through. It is extremely, extremely easy to say to yourself that you have lost control. That you are helpless, and that you are having things done to you. For me, I have coped through a sort of internal "parts work" or "Internal Family Systems" concept -- basically, in that I mentally assign roles to different people in my head. I don't mean this to insult anyone who legitimately struggles with DID, but I have done a lot of emotional coping in my life by having people inside me argue. And, as I suggested above, what I think might be of benefit to you is to let a cold, iron controller take control of you. Let them say damn the world, you are taking control of your life. There is a poem out there called 'Invictus'. It is public domain, and free on Wikipedia. It ends with: "I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul." Hang it on your wall. Say that you will seize control. Things won't be done to you; you will do. That doesn't mean act on every emotion; a captain doesn't just madly stake a claim to steer into the rocks and demand everyone follow him into the crash. But take your compass and plot your course, then steer your ship. STEER YOUR SHIP. Seize the wheel. I wish you luck.

clubm8 3y ago
You seem like you replied sincerely... so I will. Luck should not be a factor in this context. I apologize for any miscommunications up to this moment. I am not "a month or two from losing it all"... but I am a month or two away from liquidating my retirement account, and using the points I intended on a honeymoon on a one way exit from this poor excuse for a democracy. I apologize for posting when I hadn't eaten -- it's a problem for me -- I skip a meal, let my blood sugar get low, feel triggered by something on the news, and... get into it in the comments. You didn't give me what I wanted, and neither did a single other person in quite a large thread, hence my anger. What I was hoping for is one of the many so called anarchists, leftists, or progressives who have hired me in an allegedly nonprofit capacity would connect me with work that lifts me out of precarity rather than give out narcan, condoms, and weed cards designed to disarm the vulnerable and allow their exploiters to bill for services more akin to extortion than mental health treatment. I shouldn't have been coy: I wanted leads. Many people visit the so called Paris of Appalachia, and over time I've tired of the ones who ignore why we have negative population growth as they sit saying things in 2022 they should have said in 2013 -- or sooner.[0,1,2] I don't really need mental health resources -- I used the copy of "The Relaxation Response"[3] the last decent therapist I had gave me this morning. I'm good to go. (And if you get that reference... that... outside joke that's also an inside joke... I hope we are forever on the same page.) Someone could easily point me someplace to be CSO, or someplace to be generic security engineer number N -- my last role, I automated portions of my job with free tools to replace the ones they were paying for. But it never lead anywhere, hence... getting angry. Because I felt Tom Sawyered -- one too many times the football had been yanked, not by some kinkster on the side of the road with a cardboard sign but by supposedly liscenced professionals who treat posts like I'm about to make as some kind of... terroristic threat, rather than a very kind explanation of what makes people extremists and how to avoid situations like October 2020, the last time I took off the mask and spoke in the real. Instead, we have people who created the conditions we are now, wars, refugees, people with ill behaved dogs and/or children wandering the café like they own it... showing up at the finish line to try and give justtt enough aid to avoid Star Trek style Bell Riots[4,5]. That's why I said and did the things I did. This is an emergency, it has been an emergency since my own father smashed the laptop I was studying for OSCP on after I was forced out of the Center for Democracy & Technology for refusing to weaken web, since unlike when I was a teenager, I'm not a few strokes shy of script kiddie. I'm the guy they took to the range on Pearl Harbor Day to practice firing a 1911, one bullet at a time, center mass,. I'm the guy who put my backups into a safe deposit box, then told the ringmaster at Atterbury I was considering buying a gun, without stating why, and rented a Glock .40 because a .357 has too much kick, even if it's one with a longer barrel. I'm the guy who walked into an open mic he saw on a pole and declared "I'm not an Israeli spy, and I will not be gone in the night -- electricity, like driving, is a privilege -- if you stop having elections you will stop having power, in every sense of the word". If am a your enemy, you are a totalitarian, and deserve to get down on your knees and thank whatever entity you please that I have only used my WORDs. And then BE HELPFUL, or be OUT OF MY FEED. (The royal you, the generic you, not you in the HN parent sense) So to be utterly CRYSTAL clear, having type this up and looked it over before hitting post since you don't seem like you're being unhelpful on purpose: I don't need mental health resources. Our new mayor's assistant was tear gassed when we replaced the old with one who will hold the abusive nonprofit that has a monopoly on mental health care to account. People seem to think I'm literally a communist. Under communism, we would have taken folks like the ones I named that night and fired a volley of AK shots into their skulls like they were the Ceaușescus. As I said in October 2020: your post-Columbine threat model is broken, we were made in the 80s, began to form memories as the USSR fell. We are not your caregivers, we are not your friends, and if you abuse your access we will laugh when you end up in the ground with Jeffrey goddamn Epstein. My father used to talk a lot, before his Alzheimers, about working for Carter[1], in the same tone I spoke of volunteering for Bernie -- "if things had been different" and your voice trails off, as you realize it's been a long time since you felt sincerity. e lived next door the the Democratic Chairman of Allegheny County, and Mr. Stevens told my dad if you want to do anything beyond the county, it's simply impossible if you actually want to do good work. I don't know what to do, when people who met me as a child say things like "I'm Italian -- you can't say that", openly returning to the ways of the mafia we drove out of here in the 90s. But that's the issue, we just replaced one monster with another: when I was working hard to replace the laptop my dad smashed, people would say shit like "Oh I had some Ukranian women with no ID come into my tow yard, I refused to give them their phone back because they'll never pay for the car... they yelled at me, I nearly called the police" I told the woman "You have to let them have their property, you can't just... tow a car from a wreck then deny someone the way they communicate with whatever... means they have to pay you back. I'd have yelled at you too. I might have done worse, if you broke the law then threatened to call the cops to police my tone because I was a victim of human trafficking" And she threatened to slap me, told me I was autistic, then had a meltdown and drove away without giving me the cookies I never asked for, because I told her what I tell every other boomer who is stupid enough to get aggressive -- one unwanted touch and I will Tang Soo Do you in the head so hard you will meet your maker, and I will sue your estate for the cost of fixing my broken hand since I was too kind the last time I had to punch a nazi. So... thanks for the advice. But I think I'll be fine, and what's going to happen is that false allies who hand out prophylactics and narcan and the occasional sandwich are going to learn the terror of truly living under the neoliberal ideas on free speech and free association the violently insisted on. They dish it out, but can't take it, and I will literally get on a plane and leave this place to live knowing no one is going to pick up the... slack... ever again, if that's what it takes for me to pursue happiness. But I'd like to stay, if we can find a third way. Do you want that? Does anyone? Or are we going to do it the hard way? It's your move. Your so called community's move. I'm just responding, as it has been since 1991. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh#Demographics [1] >*In reality*, former president Carter is reported to have made this dire assessment in 2013, during the administration of former President Barack Obama, and in response to whistleblower Edward Snowden's recent revelations of global electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency. The source of the quote was a 17 July 2013 article which appeared in the German newspaper Der Spiegel. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jimmy-carter-functioning-democracy/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jimmy-carter-functioning-d... [2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-affaere-jimmy-carter-kritisiert-usa-a-911589.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-affaere-jimmy-car... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20111130192936/http://www.massgeneral.org/bhi/basics/eliciting_rr.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20111130192936/http://www.massge... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_%28Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine%29#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_%28Star_Trek:_Deep_... [5] "The report observed the political state of the United States, Europe and Japan, and says that in the United States the problems of governance 'stem from an excess of democracy' and thus calls for actions "to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy#Overvi... [6] https://web.archive.org/web/20120309011043/http://www.trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120309011043/http://www.trilat...

clubm8 3y ago

You seem like you replied sincerely... so I will. Luck should not be a factor in this context. I apologize for any miscommunications up to this moment. I am not "a month or two from losing it all"... but I am a month or two away from liquidating my retirement account, and using the points I intended on a honeymoon on a one way exit from this poor excuse for a democracy. I apologize for posting when I hadn't eaten -- it's a problem for me -- I skip a meal, let my blood sugar get low, feel triggered by something on the news, and... get into it in the comments. You didn't give me what I wanted, and neither did a single other person in quite a large thread, hence my anger. What I was hoping for is one of the many so called anarchists, leftists, or progressives who have hired me in an allegedly nonprofit capacity would connect me with work that lifts me out of precarity rather than give out narcan, condoms, and weed cards designed to disarm the vulnerable and allow their exploiters to bill for services more akin to extortion than mental health treatment. I shouldn't have been coy: I wanted leads. Many people visit the so called Paris of Appalachia, and over time I've tired of the ones who ignore why we have negative population growth as they sit saying things in 2022 they should have said in 2013 -- or sooner.[0,1,2] I don't really need mental health resources -- I used the copy of "The Relaxation Response"[3] the last decent therapist I had gave me this morning. I'm good to go. (And if you get that reference... that... outside joke that's also an inside joke... I hope we are forever on the same page.) Someone could easily point me someplace to be CSO, or someplace to be generic security engineer number N -- my last role, I automated portions of my job with free tools to replace the ones they were paying for. But it never lead anywhere, hence... getting angry. Because I felt Tom Sawyered -- one too many times the football had been yanked, not by some kinkster on the side of the road with a cardboard sign but by supposedly liscenced professionals who treat posts like I'm about to make as some kind of... terroristic threat, rather than a very kind explanation of what makes people extremists and how to avoid situations like October 2020, the last time I took off the mask and spoke in the real. Instead, we have people who created the conditions we are now, wars, refugees, people with ill behaved dogs and/or children wandering the café like they own it... showing up at the finish line to try and give justtt enough aid to avoid Star Trek style Bell Riots[4,5]. That's why I said and did the things I did. This is an emergency, it has been an emergency since my own father smashed the laptop I was studying for OSCP on after I was forced out of the Center for Democracy & Technology for refusing to weaken web, since unlike when I was a teenager, I'm not a few strokes shy of script kiddie. I'm the guy they took to the range on Pearl Harbor Day to practice firing a 1911, one bullet at a time, center mass,. I'm the guy who put my backups into a safe deposit box, then told the ringmaster at Atterbury I was considering buying a gun, without stating why, and rented a Glock .40 because a .357 has too much kick, even if it's one with a longer barrel. I'm the guy who walked into an open mic he saw on a pole and declared "I'm not an Israeli spy, and I will not be gone in the night -- electricity, like driving, is a privilege -- if you stop having elections you will stop having power, in every sense of the word". If am a your enemy, you are a totalitarian, and deserve to get down on your knees and thank whatever entity you please that I have only used my WORDs. And then BE HELPFUL, or be OUT OF MY FEED. (The royal you, the generic you, not you in the HN parent sense) So to be utterly CRYSTAL clear, having type this up and looked it over before hitting post since you don't seem like you're being unhelpful on purpose: I don't need mental health resources. Our new mayor's assistant was tear gassed when we replaced the old with one who will hold the abusive nonprofit that has a monopoly on mental health care to account. People seem to think I'm literally a communist. Under communism, we would have taken folks like the ones I named that night and fired a volley of AK shots into their skulls like they were the Ceaușescus. As I said in October 2020: your post-Columbine threat model is broken, we were made in the 80s, began to form memories as the USSR fell. We are not your caregivers, we are not your friends, and if you abuse your access we will laugh when you end up in the ground with Jeffrey goddamn Epstein. My father used to talk a lot, before his Alzheimers, about working for Carter[1], in the same tone I spoke of volunteering for Bernie -- "if things had been different" and your voice trails off, as you realize it's been a long time since you felt sincerity. e lived next door the the Democratic Chairman of Allegheny County, and Mr. Stevens told my dad if you want to do anything beyond the county, it's simply impossible if you actually want to do good work. I don't know what to do, when people who met me as a child say things like "I'm Italian -- you can't say that", openly returning to the ways of the mafia we drove out of here in the 90s. But that's the issue, we just replaced one monster with another: when I was working hard to replace the laptop my dad smashed, people would say shit like "Oh I had some Ukranian women with no ID come into my tow yard, I refused to give them their phone back because they'll never pay for the car... they yelled at me, I nearly called the police" I told the woman "You have to let them have their property, you can't just... tow a car from a wreck then deny someone the way they communicate with whatever... means they have to pay you back. I'd have yelled at you too. I might have done worse, if you broke the law then threatened to call the cops to police my tone because I was a victim of human trafficking" And she threatened to slap me, told me I was autistic, then had a meltdown and drove away without giving me the cookies I never asked for, because I told her what I tell every other boomer who is stupid enough to get aggressive -- one unwanted touch and I will Tang Soo Do you in the head so hard you will meet your maker, and I will sue your estate for the cost of fixing my broken hand since I was too kind the last time I had to punch a nazi. So... thanks for the advice. But I think I'll be fine, and what's going to happen is that false allies who hand out prophylactics and narcan and the occasional sandwich are going to learn the terror of truly living under the neoliberal ideas on free speech and free association the violently insisted on. They dish it out, but can't take it, and I will literally get on a plane and leave this place to live knowing no one is going to pick up the... slack... ever again, if that's what it takes for me to pursue happiness. But I'd like to stay, if we can find a third way. Do you want that? Does anyone? Or are we going to do it the hard way? It's your move. Your so called community's move. I'm just responding, as it has been since 1991. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh#Demographics [1] >*In reality*, former president Carter is reported to have made this dire assessment in 2013, during the administration of former President Barack Obama, and in response to whistleblower Edward Snowden's recent revelations of global electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency. The source of the quote was a 17 July 2013 article which appeared in the German newspaper Der Spiegel. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jimmy-carter-functioning-democracy/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jimmy-carter-functioning-d... [2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-affaere-jimmy-carter-kritisiert-usa-a-911589.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-affaere-jimmy-car... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20111130192936/http://www.massgeneral.org/bhi/basics/eliciting_rr.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20111130192936/http://www.massge... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_%28Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine%29#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_%28Star_Trek:_Deep_... [5] "The report observed the political state of the United States, Europe and Japan, and says that in the United States the problems of governance 'stem from an excess of democracy' and thus calls for actions "to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy#Overvi... [6] https://web.archive.org/web/20120309011043/http://www.trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120309011043/http://www.trilat...