Part 1: The Descent into Poverty
I never considered myself as very well off, but I was always aware that I had privilege nonetheless.
I had a job, an okay paycheck, a roof over my head, and some good food. If I was too tired, I could even order food… sometimes. I struggled with debt, but I was working my way through it.
Pretty typical for a 20-something year old in this day and age, right?
Over a year ago, I went into burnout. No more work, and while my work insurance was paying me a certain amount, they were also withholding the money until my doctor filled specific papers. That took a lot more time than necessary, so I went months without a penny to my name. It was a bit of a harsher time, but thanks to my boyfriend’s job, we managed, and I paid back what he covered for me at the minute I’d get my insurance pay.
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I eventually got on a long-term kind of work insurance, and the pay is no longer uncertain, which did wonders for my anxiety. I get my pay twice a month, no matter what papers need to be done. But of course, all of that was going a little too well, so more health issues showed up.
And more.
And more…
A couple of months later, with my new tinnitus, worsened hearing, all-consuming anxiety, and never-ending fibromyalgia, we end up… here.
Now, my boyfriend is going on leave for burnout. We work at the same company, which means that I know for a fact that the next 4-6 months are going to be absolute hell.
just for fun, let’s tally it up
1. My pay is not a lot.
2. I remember all the hoops I had to jump through to get my money from the work insurance place at first, and now he’ll be going through that, with the pay withheld for months at a time.
3. The pay on work leave is, of course, less than when we work. I was already bringing in less money than him, and now we’ve got quite a couple of months ahead of us where we’re gonna live solely on my pay.
4. Our rent is about half of my monthly pay.
5. We have no savings at all, since my time on short-term work leave and uncertain money led me to use any credit I had available, so I am in debt and can’t rely on my credit cards. They’re both full already.
No more snacks, or very few… I used to eat between meals fairly often. Food was always my coping mechanism of choice, and I made sure I had snacks as often as I could. snacks are too expensive now.
Then, the warm meals. We used to have some nice, hot meals throughout the week, almost daily, with a healthy amount of protein. Now we go for sandwiches and deli meats as our usual meal. That is getting old quickly, but it keeps us fed.
Our energy drinks are no longer affordable. We are both pretty addicted to them, and my boyfriend used to drink 2-3 per day… As for me, I can either drink coffee (and roll the dice on whether it triggers my IBS or not) or not drink anything to wake me up now. Those are the options.
We’re paying a closer attention to grocery store sales. We managed to afford ground meat on sale, we got two big value packs and we’ll separate into more portions before freezing them. I’ll make sure to keep checking the weekly sales so we can take advantage of them… Being poor is so much more work, I have to admit I am not enjoying the idea of doing this for this long.
I have been poor before. It’s not the first time, but I would have liked not to live through this again. My anxiety is making everything worse, of course. I spend a lot of time writing on this blog because it takes my mind away from my anxious inner monologue telling me an exaggerated version of everything.
Plus, disabilities are something I know well. It’s familiar, and I’ve learned how to work with them over time. My ASD enjoys the familiarity of it, even if I’m using a brand-new way of broadcasting it (blogging) and I feel like my need to help people is somewhat fulfilled. After all, if even one person gets to see something on my blog that makes their life easier, I’m happy!
this is kind of like my diary, i guess
With my blog, and with everything I do lately, I hope to create income, whether passive or active. However, the goal is passive income, in the end. I don’t really hold a diary, or write about my life in general, so I decided to treat it as a blog post.
It’s only been three weeks, but so much has been done! I’ve laid out a huge foundation to what I want to build, and now that there is nothing else to do, I will be spending most of my days building this passive income as best I can.
technically, with adhd, anything can distract me, but i’m focused
…For once! We’ve had to let go of most of our monthly subscriptions, so even IF I wanted to procrastinate on my future passive income… There isn’t much to do anyway.
Which is fine. In three weeks, I’ve researched, written, and posted 19 blog posts, and I have so many more subject ideas. I designed and released my Self-Care Checklist which you can get for free by subscribing to my email, and I’m currently working on a helpful workbook for a Black Friday event.
I’ve researched, made, and listed stuff on my Etsy page. Only digital products, this time… Physical products shipping takes too much work.
I set up a YouTube Channel for people like me, who have a severe hearing loss, that enjoy relaxation and ASMR, but hate the sound distortions at max volume on normal videos. I must admit, I’m having a lot of fun mixing and matching sounds for hard-of-hearing people ASMR, and I make sure they work well for covering tinnitus sounds as well, since I can hear it first hand.
Soon, I hope to be able to set up a Print-on-Demand shop as well. Maybe two? Depends on how many ideas I manage to bring to life.
That’s the sadness of it all: I am not lacking ideas. I’m lacking quality hours in my day. Because, YES, we all have 24 hours in a day. Those 24 hours can differ greatly from person to person, and in my case, I’m having a good day if I get 1 quality hour out of it.
Well, that’s it for today’s shenanigans. I do wonder, would you be interested in knowing more about my journey towards passive income? Or maybe you’d like to see YouTube videos about it?
Would you like me to make Live videos of just… working on my stuff as ADHD body doubling? Let me know, either in the comments or by replying to my email once you signed up below!
