I initially wanted to post about the brief outage due to the DNS glitch that was redirecting traffic meant for 8kun to facebook. However, I have a fair bit on my mind.
Early December has been fruitful for me vis a vis my pursuit of new ideas that I believe will help to change the world. It has been less fruitful financially for me and for others in this country. For my part, I was finally awarded food stamps which I have recently learned may be turned off because I took (and lost within a period of two weeks) a job. The way our state's benefits (and likely others) work is thag when you get a job, they don't turn off your benefits. When you lose that job, that's when they take them away. Makes perfect sense! They get information about employment status from what are known as COBRA notificiations. In the U.S., COBRA is law dating to the 1980s that forces companies to give employees the option of continuing to receive health insurance coverage through their group plan even after a job loss, regardless of reason, provided that the employee pay 100-102% of the total premium, and even then, this is only for 30 days in most circumstances. Most people will never use COBRA insurance, which is run through the government. Employers are required to notify the government any time a worker is serparated from the company for any reason in service of this program.
The welfare office (now called the Office of Income Maintenance) uses these COBRA notifications as their sole source of data concerning whether someone's employment status has changed. The trouble is, by the time a COBRA notification is sent out, that individual is out of work and once again in need of benefits. However, they do not care. They send you a letter demanding to see proof of termination from your job (which they already have) and if you don't send it to them, they take your food stamps away. So, that is my situation. I had only applied for them as recently as mid-October and they are already getting ready to take them away.
Why? Well, I finally found a job in early November which lasted for a total of not quite two weeks because they withheld payment of wages when payday rolled around and quitting was the only way to force them to pay me for the time I had already worked. Eventually, they voluntarily paid me my wages, but since mid-November I've been out of work, once again.
I feel confident that my ideas will help the world given time and I also feel confident that if my financial troubles could be resolved, it would enable me to continue to do a whole lot more good than I could living on the street or dead.
It is beyond strange to me that I should continue to struggle in this way, given the nature of my contributions. Yes, I wonder, "What will become of me?" but I also wonder how the world would be harmed by my absence from it (at least in any meaningful way, seeing as living out of my car cramps my style and doesn't help to get the creative juices flowing.)
I am reminded of a quote and I have lived by its spirit since I first heard it at age 10.
"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."
Each day is another opportunity for us to profoundly change the course of history in ways big and small. As we approach the beginning of a new year, I hope the handful of you reading this will take these words to heart and live by them as I have.