I feel this may be slithering off topic, but some of you have also done so with the sarcasm, etc. The reason I speak up for GG is because she does have that mindset to get what she desires, the details she needs just haven't lined up for her yet. She's really very nice, she just answers here very honestly and bluntly as to how she feels and I think it's being misconstrued. In PMs, some of the ideas I had didn't work for her, but some DID. She doesn't refute everything as implied here.
You all find her answers depressing because when someone has trouble getting free (in a way that works for them), it is depressing. It's depressing to realize that a lot of things aren't like the lies you were told when you were a kid. "Just run faster on the hamster wheel, and you'll be successful." or my favorite - which I can personally vouch for as crap, "More responsibility equals more money!" I had a job where getting shot at or assaulted was very real. The job was to keep other people and their shit safe. It did actually happen a few weeks ago that someone doing what I did was shot at. That job didn't pay worth a damn for the risk and responsibility involved. I've been directly responsible for the lives of groups of people, groped, cursed at, spoken to like a dog and did dangerous things every day. Only 2 of those jobs has ever really paid off in terms of compensation for risk/responsibility. Talk about disillusionment.
I've pulled off (now) to some degree what she in-part wants to do essentially with a very similar situation; and it's not how some of you've spun what she wants to be. I wonder if you'd ridicule or make fun of me, too? I've worked hours that would make people puke. I've worked while puking (no joke). I worked until I nearly killed myself, lost my identity and my business and had to shut down for 18 months to recover, literally being able to do little but lay in bed, sometimes wishing to die. I've damaged my heart. I have nervous system damage, with 'tremors' noted on my DOT long-form physical. I've worked in jobs that required the drawing of weapons, backing 100,000lb vehicles up switchbacks with no guardrails, etc. I've paid my dues. I've put in the time which enables me to speak as I do. I'm 5'2" and 120 lbs, though I got so sick I dropped down to 105 at one point. Do you all want to make fun of me, too? I wasn't tough enough, I didn't want to work hard enough? That was my problem?
Maybe what she'd like to hear is,"You're right. It's corrupted and pretty screwed up. No, you're not crazy at all for not wanting to kill yourself 'working' as 'work' is currently defined anyhow. Hang on and keep looking and something will come up for you that does work. In the meantime, dream and make your plans. You can do it."
Currently - and I don't think this is well understood here - yes, she needs a little higher income. She's already cut her expenses to a reasonable amount. $12 just isn't much to have much leftover to save if you're trying to hold onto a house solo. I know approximately where she is geographically, I'm from MN. It's fairly rural where she is, she's not lying. Were she in the Cities and a warmer area, some of the suggestions would be more feasible, but she's not.
She already works nearly full-time hours, sometimes with overtime. She doesn't get out of her job until 1 am. It makes it difficult to squeeze the extra time and energy to try and pursue yet more for work. She'd like to make more money and not have to kill herself to do it. This is not a crime, it's more of a crime to work people until you nearly kill them or their souls. She's been trying to sell her photography on the side (I went to look at some - she's pretty good), she had started a blog, she bought her home since 2013, etc., - she has done things. I don't understand this big perspective gap - are we seeing the same thing? Why are some of you only seeing the negative in her, but are accusing just her of only doing that?
So, now because she has the ideals she has (which again, isn't a crime) it's spun and read as a get-rich-quick sob story? She IS working, folks. Please read that again. I think the media has been so successful programming everyone with stress, divisiveness, suspicion and negativity, that's the reality level people are reacting on.
If every single thing she said was a refutement, I'd understand the frustration, but it actually hasn't been. A choice is being made to see it that way. Who is actually dictating your choices of how to see things?
She says she'll check into stuff, she's thanked people for their input. She made progress on deciding what kind of rig she'd like. She's said the things she's already done. When she's getting jumped on en masse, she feels the need to defend herself. A group kind of nearly knocked her over the head with that $1 meatloaf pan, complete with pictures of what they assumed she'd bought, making fun of her, essentially - when that wasn't even necessarily what she bought...? She wasn't asking to get jumped all over about that, it was mentioned casually as an illustration when she was trying to answer accusations about her grocery budget (which included household and other things). You call it 22 pages of 'advice', I call it a lot of a new poster trying to explain something then having to justify and defend herself which took up a lot of those posts.
It's fear, to some degree, we tend to fear what we see with someone else as happening to us - and sometimes we only see the negative in what they say because it's a reflection of our own negativity. Then we get angry. She's kind of hit a nail on the head with some things that don't work well in reality anymore - and that's spending a large chunk of waking hours to make only enough to squeak by (and be told it isn't good enough because you're not living like a caveman or nearly working yourself to death like I did) when you are being responsible and putting in the time. It shouldn't be that way. It's uncomfortable to hear I suppose because it's a very different idea than the beliefs we usually have drilled into us from the time we're born. She's questioning those beliefs.
Brings to mind some Pink Floyd:
Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.
And corruption will never change until the people have all decided they've gotten tired of it. Maybe there's a better way somehow, but until the perspective-changers stand up and start challenging status-quo, nobody will be looking for that way. You all started to do so by changing beliefs about the way you had to live. Stop judging her for her beliefs, she's just coming from a very different overall perspective.
I actually do have some more suggestions for her, but I'm not going to post them here because I don't want her crucified if they don't work for her situation and she says so. I understand that they may not. I'm not personally offended if they don't. Well, maybe I'll put some of them here in case they help anyone.
