Entry 0052

I'm throwing in the towel on the job hunt.

• I'm too inexperienced to be marketable.
• My disability prevents me from communicating effectively in interviews. It's not reasonable to request that interviews take place via text chat.
• Even if I were hired, I don't have the spoons to be consistent and reliable every day.
• I can't guarantee that my paranoia and anxiety won't interfere with the job and workplace relationships.

I can get by on $400/month disability benefits + medicaid. I've been doing it for a while now. My main concern is when my car breaks down and isn't driveable and I can't afford a new (used) one. Maybe my family can help me out with that, I don't know. I hate asking for that kind of money, because it would make me feel selfish and burdensome. The worst-case scenario is that I don't have a car, which means I'd be driving my parents' cars if I need to go somewhere. Not the end of the world -- I've done this for most of the time I've had a driver's license -- but it would take away a non-trivial degree of personal freedom from me when I want to use a car and one isn't available because my parents are using them.

This doesn't mean I'm going to waste my life doing nothing. I'm still passionate about free and open source technology, free culture, and associated movements. I want to do what I can to contribute to them.

This resolution, if one may call it such, takes a significant anxiety burden off my shoulders. Still, though, I'm feeling a little depressed about it. I've internalized enough of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic that I can't help but feel sort of useless. It doesn't help that almost everyone around me IRL thinks that way too to some extent. "Are you still bumming off your parents?" "You ever going to get a real job?" It makes me avoid going to social gatherings because I know people are going to ask what I'm doing, because that's just what people do. Most are well-intentioned, but you occasionally get a wise-ass who thinks they're better than you because they have a full-time job with benefits and make a real salary. And it forces me to just take it and casually laugh it off, because it's not an appropriate context to explain the details of my disability and mental health issues. Despite the fact that it's plainly obvious I'm struggling with speech and social anxiety when I talk to people. It's like they pretend not to notice, or they chalk it up to stupidity/incompetence, which reinforces their belief that they're better than me.