I'm more and more convinced that some things don't ever get better.

[HereSince1628]

Of course, at the moment, I'm really affectively challenged, but I've got a personality disorder...that doesn't make me too stupid to know things have gone worse.

I went for an interview for the job through Incentive Therapy. It paid $1.50 an hour, really. just less than 1/4 minimum wage. But, it went OK. I got to carry on a conversation with educated professional people about how I would approach data mining that could help them with administrative reporst needed for their unit. For a short time it was almost like using my PhD.

But then the glitch... because

The people administering THE PROGRAM have stereotyped its participants exactly the same way I do: they are miscreants.

And, although I am not a rehab-ing substance abuser or a person on parole for some legal mishap, I can’t be separated from that class of folks. Previous employment with the State as an epidemiologist, decades of working with student records, and having had a Top Secret/Crypto access clearance while in the military mean nothing.

THE PROGRAM CLASSIFIES ME AS ONE OF THE MISCREANTS.

Consequently, There is a program policy that precludes me from the possibility of seeing other peoples' personal information on their medical records. And so...after raised hopes of a way to spend my days using my education...n.o.p.e. again this time not because the people didn't want me, but because the folks 'trying to help me' won't let me.

After the meeting, the program assistant's and my caseworker's converstation turned to addressing their need to get me assigned to "a job' and notions like having me sit and watch a waiting room or the VA bowling alley, or ‘whatever positions are leftover.’

So, I know it’s not like this was intentionally punitive, or even particularly personal in an intentional way. Even if it's personally painful. It was just a period of thought diversion manipulated by the well intentioned cheerleaders, abruptly followed by a stark reminder of all I’ve lain waste and the heap of detritus I've become.

Just an affective rediscovery of what remains radically unaccepted.

[Tobin S.]

1. I'm an optimist, HS

But I'm also a realist. I know that things don't always get better. I know that you usually can't think your way out of a mental illness- at least without what would probably be some long term help. I know that people die by their own hand all the time. I know that people wreck their lives because they can't get the proper help. I know that sometimes a situation can devolve to the point that there is absolutely no hope. I don't think you are there yet, though.

You are one smart dude (it's evident in your posts) and I think you can use that to turn things around. How? I don't know. I wish I did because I'd tell you. For now, I'm just glad that you are still posting in this forum. If you ever need a star again just give me a holler.

[HereSince1628]

2. good outcomes and bad outcomes...are the possibilities of goodness in a binomial world

in a time series it seems these things aren't independent Bernoulli trials.

Instead, life accumulates momentum in a particular direction.

Some of us must crash and burn to balance a universe in which others get to blaze to glory.

It generally works out as "even", although it really sucks for some who experience the particulars that lead there.

[Tobin S.]

3. You made me go to dictionary.com and wikipedia

:)

I think some people both crash and burn and blaze to glory in their lifetimes. That is if you don't define "crash and burn" as an untimely death exclusively. I know you've done a lot of crashin' and burnin' in life, but I do know of at least one time when you've blazed to glory, or at least it would seem so to me: Earning that Ph.D. That's bad ass in my opinion.

I've got a good life right now. I've got a half way decent job, a nice place to live, and I just got married. But if there is one more thing that I wish I could have it would be a college education. I've tried several times, but each time I just couldn't cut the mustard for some reason or other. So I drive a truck for a living.

But from the time I was 20 until I was 30 it was just one, huge, 10 year long crash and burn. My life before that wasn't so peachy either, but at least my brain chemistry was normal back then. Hard times are easier to weather when your brain isn't broken.

[HereSince1628]

4. I think that my pursuit of education was a rejection of my family

My parents graduated high school. My father dropped out at 17, and then returned at 19 to finish. They after school in detention. Both had problems with homework they couldn't solve. My father was abysmal at English, my mother couldn't do story problems in arithmetic. They formed an alliance that overcame each of their deficiencies...sort of...but, there is no need to talk ill of the dead.

I wasn't what the old man wanted; nor what my mother wanted. I decided at about age 13 that neither of them knew a gaddamn thing about how I should be. So I read and listened to shortwave radio, and disagreed with both of them on almost everything. That got me literally knocked down and stomped on. Broom handles were broken against my side, and wire coat hangers whipped me and cut my skin. And I walked away...on a path that took me to Vietnam and then Thailand and then to what seemed Nirvana...HIGHER EDUCATION.

But all that education...and with a PhD I'm pretty fucking full of education...I never solved the problem that caused the original scar, and I still can't name it well enough to solve it.