I hate this-I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT!!!

The BBQ Pit
61

Let’s see if I understand the problems correctly in this thread:

You’re very unhappy, unemployed, lacking in a social life, and need dental benefits. I’m several hundred miles from Pittsburgh, so I can’t very well invite you over.
Hmmm…

I don’t know if you have kids or not (can’t remember), but I know of a possible solution:

Join the Air Force.

Laugh if you will, but it worked great for me. I got an excellent skill, the benefits are decent (you’ll at least get medical and dental care, even if they are talentless hacks :wink: ). I assure you, you’ll meet new tons of new people.

Just a thought. It’s kind of like college - it’s four years of your life, and you’ll learn some new things. But (and this is the best part) they pay YOU!

It’s just a thought.

62

This will sound like a weasel excuse, but I do not think I am cut out for the military. My OCD, my ADHD, my meds, and I have no interest in the armed forces anyways, plus my political beliefs.

Yeah, I’m making excuses. Big fucking deal. But I do know myself, and I know that a huge change like that would send me right over the fucking edge.

Merry fucking Christmas, Guin.

63

I think recognizing you sound like a whiney looser is the first step toward shedding the condition. No, I’m not trying to get on your case, I’m just using your words.

Get out of the damn house. Yes it’s inconvenient, but as you say you don’t have much else going on. Next time you find yourself agonizing over whether or not to step out, ask yourself if there are real impediments, or if you are making excuses.

Getting out for any reason would be good, but a job so much the better. You need something to hold your interest, you need social interaction, and you need money of your own. A job could do all of the above.

64

Hey Guin - you could always start a dog walking business in your area.

It would get you out of the house, anyway.

:slight_smile:

65

Well, G, ultimately you have to decide, and do, what’s good for you. I speak from experience when I say sitting in the house being depressed only leads to more of the same. But I know that doesn’t help you any.

I like to be a problem solver, so no doubt I’ll be thinking about you - though I doubt I’ll come up with anything helpful. I don’t know if you’ll take comfort in that or be creeped out :).

If I can do something for you, let me know.

Don’t knock the ‘huge change’, though - sometimes it’s just what you need, even if you don’t want it.

66

I went to college in Pittsburgh too, Guin. Hell, you and I might even know each other… :wink:

I can echo your sentiments that there isn’t a whole lot to do there, especially for singles in their 20’s. Most of my classmates said leaving was the best thing they could have done.

But I also have to agree with many of the others here… the SDMB is a great place, but posting here 24/7 won’t solve your problems. Sorry I don’t have anything more constructive than that, but you’ve shot down most everyone else’s suggestions.

67

WEll, I know I’m not military material.

Right now, I need a temporary job, just to get back on my feet. FRIDAY, I have plans to spend the day at the mall, just getting out, walking around, trying stuff on, playing around and maybe seeing if any bookstores are hiring.
Yeah, it’s retail, but it’s a small thing. I applied at Joann Fabrics-I so wanted to work there, and learn more about sewing-but that was two weeks ago.

Don’t think I don’t appreciate anyone’s advice-I do, and I know you’re right. I’m just looking for excuses, I guess. I so wish I were at least back in school.

I might volunteer at the community library. It would at least get me out of the house.

68

Not a weasel excuse at all. If you have been treated for ADHD after a certain age (15 IIRC), the military will not accept you.

Hmm, you want to get out of the house and you’re confused about religion?

Convert to Judaism and marry me.

Things will likely become much, much worse. But after we get the discount divorce package, we’ll still have all those wedding presents. My apartment building is filled with Soviet immigrants. You’ll have access to all kinds of information on your beloved Czar and his empress. There’s a WaWa a block away. Thus, potato chips can be had any time. You’ll no longer worry about a license or car. Living in Philly, you couldn’t afford the insurance.

  I promise to love you in richness and in poorness, in impotence and in potence, whether at home or blasting across the Alps on a rocket powered sled navigated by monkeys.....
Whaddya say?

But hurry, once this information about me gets out, I’ll be swamped with offers.

69

Sorry Glory, volunteering involves an application, a long wait, and a short reply–“We have enough volunteers for our needs, but thanks for being a sucker and believing us.” And they advertise a few months later, same cycle. I’ve tried it, and that happened.

70

I have never had to fill out an application to volunteer somewhere. I have worked in soup kitchens and other organizations that feed and house the homeless.

71

Guin,
Try to have a good Christmas, and try again in the New Year. Holiday times are noted for depression. Heard the suicide rates (not that you are) spike dramatically. FWIW, I know of 2 far worse Christmases - my sister’s best friend spent one Christmas Eve in a funeral parlor, her 19 y.o. brother and his friends got stinking drunk 12/21, went driving around and hit the el bridge abutment. 3 dead.

Good HS friend of mine sophomore year - his father had a heart attack at home Christmas morning. He was the one to try CPR. Didn’t work.

** Gorgon **,

  If you find yourself coming downstate soon, I'll meet up and buy you a beer.
72

Live by the dice, no, not casino gambling but deciding what to do everyday by the throw of the dice. That can beat boredom.

73

you can make all the excuses in the world, but you know they won’t lead to anywhere.

I know it’s hard when you can’t drive and you’re stuck at home. There are loads of things you can do that are constructive.
Not to sound like a fuddy duddy, but what exactly do you think people did back in the ‘olden days’, before message boards and such?

I also agree with the sentiment that it’s a vicious cycle. The less you do, the more you want to do less.

If I may, let me be the sharp voice of reality and I hope you don’t hate me for it.

YOU are the only one that can change Guin’s life.

If you think moping around the house at 24 is bad, think of doing it at 40.

Do something radical: join the peace corps, something, anything!
While the army isn’t for you (and I understand that), it is NOT the only thing out there. Apply to grad schools somewhere. You have the time:look for endowments, grants and such. what do you have to lose?

The fact is, Guin, you are being lazy about life and you are using the dope (or what ever else it is you surf on) as a crutch, an addiction, an excuse.

and I know it sucks and I know it sounds mean, but I have been there too.

The greatest journey begins with one step. So take it already.

I am really serious when I challenge you to a week without the net. Can you do it?

I bet you that by day three at the latest, you’d have found something to entertain you.

You can make all the excuses in the world, but the only person you can’t fool, the only person who stands to lose, is YOU.

Best of luck to you. I hope things work out.

74

It sucks quite hard in a lot of places, my BIL can’t get hired as a mechanic in Indiana-- he may yet go down to Florida to get a job.
He’s really good, he kept my father’d Oldsmoblie running for two years longer than anyone else could.

75

Oh hey-I’m the first one to agree. I’m waiting for La Roche’s masters program in history-which won’t start until next fall, at least. I KNOW this is only temporary. And I know I’m going to land on my feet. I’m working at it.

I just feel like flipping out every once in a while.

76

For what it’s worth, I’ve written posts like BNB’s on at least three different occasions over the last year or so in threads where you’ve started whining about your life, Guin. Deleted every one 'cause I didn’t feel that it was my place. The closest I got was in a thread where you were mad at your cat for attacking you, and I hinted that maybe the cat was suggesting that you get off of the computer for a bit. So here it goes.

You have put up so many walls declairing what you can’t do that you no longer have anything that you can do besides sit and post. You can’t get a job that requires driving somewhere because you can’t pass the test. You can’t pass the test because you have some disorder. You can’t treat the disorder because you don’t have money. You don’t have money because you spent all of your future earnings on a degree that won’t pay shit, and which you want to further spend more money on to get an advanced degree in. You can’t take the bus to a potential job because it’s ‘not safe’.

Well bullshit. These aren’t walls, they’re excuses. I can think of a perfectly valid, to me, excuse to not do anything but sit and post, but I don’t. Because that’s a stupid way to live my life. You can’t handle change? Well, since life involves changes, then I think your time would be better spent learning to deal with change than spending the amount of time you do avoiding it.

You want a job that pays good money and has insurance? Then aquire the skills necessary to get such a job. You want a job that pays good money, has insurance, and is related to a history degree? Those only seem to exist in fairy-tale land, unless you’re very lucky, well connected, and much more highly educated. Sorry, but not everybody gets to have their dream job, and you certainly can’t sit around the house all day waiting for a dream job to come along.

This means that you have to get a different job than your dream job. This doesn’t mean you should go work at K-Mart again for $7.50 an hour, because we both know that that doesn’t cover squat…this means that you should either get a completely different bachelors degree in a field that pays something, or aquire some sort of marketable skill (electrical? carpentry? clerical? accounting? sysadmin? paid assassin?) to pay the bills until the dream job comes along. This may involve going to tech school, or joining an apprenticeship program, or doing research at the library. Nobody has learned how to sew by working at a fabric store, they learn by going to trade school. And you certainly don’t learn marketable skills by posting on a message board all day.

Sorry if this was a bit too harsh, but I have been holding it in for over a year now…In summary: Do something today that increases your ability to get a job. Don’t wait until the new year, or next fall, or until you hear back from that place you applied for a shitty dead end job at. Do it today.

-lv

(oh wait, it’s late in Pittsburg. You can wait until tomorrow, but NO LATER!)

77

I have to say that in Pinellas County, there are, by actual count, more applicants than available jobs. In the last three weeks, I have spoken with at least six people who came to Florida looking for work and who are leaving because there is no work to be had. The hospitality industry is a maybe, but they currenly have their pick of applicants. I would NOT advise anyone to move here in the hopes of finding a job.

78

Look, assmonkey, most of what you say is true, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you run down my degree. Okay? I worked hard for it, I EARNED it, it’s what I love, and if it doesn’t pay a lot, so fucking WHAT? Besides, an advanced degree in history DOES bring in money, if one works for it. :rolleyes:
As for getting off of the computer, you’re right. I’m getting off right now. Okay? Happy? I’ll go downstairs and play with the cats. Tomorrow I’ll go to the library and Friday I’ll go shopping.

Maybe I’ll as Tuba to put me on sabbatical or something. I don’t know.

79

I have a hard time believing that someone would be turned down at say, a nursing home if they wanted to visit an elderly person over Christmas and maybe read to them. When you think of an older person with limited mobility and no family to visit them over the holidays, it makes our own problems seem very small in comparison.

Darn it, now I think I’m going to to go volunteer!

80

I was seriously considering this yesterday, when I realized that for the last three days, any time I wasn’t sleeping, I was here.

“Me too!” to your OP. I’m going through a period of soul-crushing poverty. Every other day is a fast, out of necessity. Not putting resumes out until the new year, because I won’t have bus-fare until then.

The SDMB is a good distraction, but I think I’m using it the way some people use alcohol or heroin. Can’t be good.