Saturday, January 4, 2020

Just really tired

I'm a pretty private person, not one to typically discuss personal matters. After all they are personal. But of late I've wanted to put some things out. It's a new year and I've seen social posts from several people of how they were blessed in the last decade. I get a lot of mixed feelings about this. I've been trying to find 10 positive things from the last 10 years, so far I can't do it. Maybe it's because the past few years have been so bad that I just can't focus. Both of my sons graduated and have moved on. I changed jobs, not sure if that was good or bad, just different. Started playing with honey bees. Those things happened in the past decade. I've never had the "dream job" it's always been just work, a means to an end, survival. But of the bad that's happened there is a lot. I won't list everything here, a lot of personal stuff is simply too painful, and like I said before, it's personal. Our house burned down about 8 years ago. I learned a hard lesson about homeowner's insurance. Didn't have a very good policy. It did not cover all of the needed repairs and did not provide temporary living. We exhausted our savings rebuilding and just living. Essentially 15 years of savings was gone in a few months. My mom died kind of suddenly, she had what should have been considered routine surgery, developed some post op complications and passed quickly. About four and a half years ago Vicki was out of work for a year and a half for health and medical reasons. Learned a lesson about long and short term disability insurance. You should have it. So again we spent what we'd tried to recover. We've had three cars totaled in accidents in the past 6 years. Took a loss on two of them, the latest I'm actually getting a reasonable amount. Now I need to find a decent car for that price. Last year, nearly three years since we started rebuilding for the second time Vicki was rear ended at an intersection. The other driver was found to be at fault. Her insurance company called me and accepted fault. The problem though is that she had minimal insurance. I hired an attorney to navigate the mess and learned today approximately how much is available. It will cover between one third and one half of what Vicki will need. Having learned a lesson before, she was paying for disability insurance. The problem is they haven't been paying us. Again we've exhausted all of our meager savings. Being wiped out three times in less that ten years has taken it's toll. I'm sure eventually the insurance company will catch up, in the mean time I juggle payments to survive. Some folks have offered to lend some money. I will not go into debt with someone else to cover a different debt. And will NEVER borrow money from friends. That ALWAYS ends badly. I'm sure people are familiar with the glass half full or half empty question. In my case the glass has a hole in it and no matter how much I try to fill it, it all just leaks out. I'm not asking for anything, and I can already hear some people saying to stop feeling sorry for myself. And for the love of God do NOT quote me some scripture. I've read the whole book, I know what it says. I just felt a need to vent. This is my life, and it's just a small piece of what's happened in the past decade. I've stopped dreaming though, pretty much stopped planning beyond a month or two. Far too many times I've made plans only to have them wiped out. Retirement should be in four years and quite frankly that is getting a bit frightening. I have had a lot of people say that if I need something to just ask. I appreciate that, what I need is a neurosurgeon who will perform surgery for a bucket of honey. I've got a lot of honey.