14 posts tagged “personal”
I have shied away from talking about personal matters on this and my other blogs recently. I currently have a lot going on in my life, and there isn’t much of it that is good. I don’t anticipate there being much interest in such matters from my readers, so I have refrained from such matters. I have a few that I have written, but I think that I will post them on my Love and Peace blog sometime.
I have 118 blog posts written and saved as drafts in Windows Live Writer. I haven’t set publish dates for them (man, that feature is so awesome! It’s like blogging in the future!), but I will be doing that this week sometime.
Pseudo-recently, I have had the misfortune of a major medical problem that has left me staring down some medical bills that I could never crawl out from under. While I won't pontificate at this point in time about how I think that the entire medical and insurance industry is fleecing us (but I will soon, as there is all kinds of problems with the whole thing), I will talk about an eventuality that is very unfortunate. I am, and have been raised...to believe that a man always should maintain his honor, and this includes paying his debt. I am faced with a debt that I cannot repay, and while I feel that it is an unjust debt, it bothers me very much that I won't be able to repay it. I am facing bankruptcy. Given these circumstances, I did some digging around the internet and discovered how common it is.
“Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country,” says lead author Steffie Woolhandler, MD, of the Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Mass. “If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that’s the major finding in our study.”
Dr. Woolhandler and her colleagues surveyed a random sample of 2,314 people who filed for bankruptcy in early 2007, looked at their court records, and then interviewed more than 1,000 of them.
They concluded that 62.1% of the bankruptcies were medically related because the individuals either had more than $5,000 (or 10% of their pretax income) in medical bills, mortgaged their home to pay for medical bills, or lost significant income due to an illness. On average, medically bankrupt families had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses, including $26,971 for those who lacked insurance and $17,749 who had insurance at some point.
Overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically related bankruptcy had health insurance, they say.
“That was actually the predominant problem in patients in our study—78% of them had health insurance, but many of them were bankrupted anyway because there were gaps in their coverage like co-payments and deductibles and uncovered services,” says Dr. Woolhandler. “Other people had private insurance but got so sick that they lost their job and lost their insurance.”
Want to know another interesting fact from the study?
His group’s research found that medical bills unduly stress 1 in 5 families.
Either way, the high cost of health care is a problem that’s probably getting worse for people in the United States, particularly since the economic picture became grimmer after the study was conducted.
“The recession didn’t happen until a year after our study,” says Dr. Woolhandler. “We’re quite sure that the problem of bankruptcy overall is worse, the numbers have been soaring, and the number this year is expected to be higher than it was before Congress tightened bankruptcy eligibility in 2005.”
In 2005, bankruptcies peaked at two million filings.
The entire system really bothers me, and to be frank, I think that this will be one of the key factors in our economic downfall. I don't mean the mini-recession that we are in now...I mean the one that is still forthcoming. It is important to consider that this also needs to account for the upcoming problems with Medicaid and Social Security.
I’ve learned a few life lessons in my time, but perhaps the most useful one, the one that I would pass on to my kids, is that life will always throw you a curveball.
If you reflect back upon life, you realize that its a series of stages; some long, some short. Analogous to an at-bat in baseball, it is certain that during each one, life will throw you a curve ball. An unexpected event of varying levels of severity, curveballs are a part of life. Things may be going well, or they may be going poorly, but rest assured that as soon as you adapt and adjust to your current life situation, here comes that curve ball.
Just like in baseball, not many people can hit the curve. It strikes out a lot of batters. It works on the field the same way that it works in life: it gets you because it catches you off-guard. The best that many can hope for is to foul it off. Oftentimes, that is enough. If you can keep fouling it off, eventually you will get that fastball out over the plate.
Recently, I have been carrying around a notebook and a pen with me in order to write down whatever thoughts or notions pop into my head. I had originally planned it as a way to keep a log of upcoming blog posts, but it proved to be far more interesting than that. Ultimately, it proved an intimate snapshot of me for that period of time. I have been looking through these lately, and I am amazed at some of the things that I have written.
There are blog post ideas, sure. There are also phrases for Twitter, Facebook statuses, quotes, musings, article topics, website ideas, ideas for my book, and thoughts about more personal aspects of my life as well. What I find interesting is how different the musings from two consecutive days can be.
I know that a lot of it stems from what is going on in my personal relationships and what is happening with them. Its a fact I have yet to reconcile. I don’t even know where to begin. I should post about it tomorrow. I don’t mean to open up the personal floodgates, but you know what? F*ck it. I am going to do it anyway because I have some things to say.
I have to destroy myself if I am to have any chance of continuing on. It won’t be easy and it won’t be pretty.
I suck at dealing with things. I have been through hell and back several times, but despite this, there are many things that I have failed to learn. I consider this as a personal failure. I don’t know if it stems from how I grew up, if its from my viewpoint of the world, or what it is, but I seem to have a real problem dealing with things.
Typically, I have always avoided dealing with issues. I would busy myself most of the time either working, going to school, reading, movies; it doesn’t really matter. The point is that I have, and still do, avoid dealing with the majority of my issues. The real problem is that I avoid the most personal issues. It is these issues that have a direct bearing on how I live my life. On how I think…and feel. It shapes my life experience.
I avoid dealing with family issues. I have been letting them down for as long as I can remember. I have been letting myself down for even longer. I look upon myself as a heap of wasted potential. As someone who is afraid to stand up and be counted. I don’t consider myself a remarkable person, but I do consider myself someone who possesses the facilities to do remarkable things. And I have done nothing worthy of mention. I don’t fully understand why I avoid these things. Shame is a large part of it. I have avoided my family for a long time because I consider myself a failure. Truth be told, we were never a TV class family (do those even exist), but I can’t help but feel that I am a large part of that as well.
I also avoid dealing with the financial aspects of life. Things have happened in my life recently that have ultimately placed me in a financial position that I have never been in before. I don’t know if it’s the unfamiliarity of it, or if it is a level of fear and paranoia that has overtaken me, but this aspect of my life has me feeling terrible about myself as well. I understand that you can’t control job loss and layoffs, and that you can’t control medical bills, and as much as you would like to, you can’t really control whether or not those people that you decide to help out ever pay you back…but it affects me all the same. I feel like a failure in this regard as well. It wasn’t that long ago that I was doing well financially. Hell, this year has had more ups and downs that i ever thought possible. In the last year alone, I had two incredible jobs that a person could have been happy with and done very well for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, I lost those, as well as a job opportunity that I never would have dreamed possible. I must be honest, this has all done a lot to dampen my spirits.
I also avoid dealing with any sort of situation that may prove emotionally destructive. Certain things really affect me.
They affect me because I let them, and I happen to be very particular as to what those things or people are. When it comes to making decisions in regards to people, I fail miserably. It is this part of my life that affects me the most. I have only felt a connection with two people in my entire life. In one of those cases, things turned out terribly and it really affected me. At the time, she was the only person that I let gain insight into the real me. Into what I thought, and felt, and what made me me. As she went further down the rabbit hole, she became skittish and began to back off. To be honest, I can’t really blame her. How could I? I don’t like being me, how could I expect her to?
As fate would have it, I met someone absolutely amazing. I was pretty much floored from the beginning, and as time went on, I began to notice that I felt very differently about her. One of her most striking features is that she has the biggest heart of anyone that I had ever met. I can’t rehash the details (I don’t have it in me today…), but we ended up falling for each other. I was finally happy. Genuinely happy. As things progressed, naturally she wanted to know more about me. To my surprise, I was willing to share. After what had happened previously, I was rather shocked at how naturally it came. I am not going to lie, there were hiccups along the way, but all things considered, I would say it was rather smooth sailing. I am afraid that I took her too far out to sea however. As time went by, she began to distance herself. Eventually, it came to a point where she said that it was too much for her to deal with. I don’t want to get into the details, (although I probably should…see, there is that avoidance mechanism again), but I can’t express how bad this made me feel. In fact, I still haven’t really gained my footing from it. I had a feeling…a certainty of sorts…about her, and I let her get to know me more than anyone else on the entire planet. When I realized that it was too much to deal with, it broke my heart in a million pieces. It reaffirmed all my thoughts and fears that no one in this world could…or would…care about the real me. I can’t-and won’t-blame her. There isn’t a person alive that hates me, and how I am, more than I do. How could I blame her for not wanting to deal with that? You know what? I am going to cut this short. I can’t describe how this makes me feel or the impact that it has had on my life.
I made a promise. Sometimes, its a promise that I wish that I didn’t make. Going through this is, and has been hell. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I am going to battle through however because of this promise. I have begun to wonder what that promise is worth however. I still hold onto the belief that a promise is a promise however. Its just getting harder and harder to retain these values in a life like this.
I wonder what percentage of blog posts are apologies for not blogging? I would guess that it is in the neighborhood of 0.05%. That may not seem bad until you consider it in context. Perhaps a better way to frame the point that I am trying to make, is what percent of blogs have a post (or two...) that contain an apology or explanation for not blogging? I suspect that figure is between 5-10%.
Things are kind of off for me lately. Its difficult to explain, so I won't bother. It was this thought process that led me to a revelation of sorts however. I find it funny how I can't be candid in this blog. Or any of my blogs. In the age of the internet and its ability to be essentially anonymous if you so choose, I find it interesting that I still don't have an outlet for some of my true thoughts and feelings. Am I afraid of being judged by random people who don't know me? Most of my sites are designed to be anything but anonymous, but I find it interesting that I haven't created one where I could just word vomit all my thoughts and feelings into the ether.
This got me thinking about why I created this blog-and the others. I appreciate the ability to rant and rave about topics that interest me in a semi-cogent way on this site. My other blogs (particularly my wordpress blog) were designed to be more personal and relate to my thoughts and feelings more. That never panned out however. They typically parrot this blog with the occasional specific article/post. Why?
I would like to sit and analyze it, but I think that it boils down to two things. Time and fear. I find myself strapped for time to a severe degree, and I simply don't have time to post like I would like to. I also think that I am afraid to really open up about what I think and feel. What if I am pissed at someone and rant about it, and they discover it two months later? What then? It reeks of *gasp* drama to me, and I don't need it. I would love to have that outlet, but the potential cost could be too high.
I don’t know where to begin. As I sit here, staring at Live Writer, I have 21 blog posts sitting in my drafts section. Normally, this would never happen in a million years! I am very Type A, and that would have driven me insane not too long ago. What perplexes me, is my lack of dismay at this fact. Don’t get me wrong, it still bothers me, but my point is that up until very recently, I never would have allowed this to happen. The question is why?
As I sift through them, I look for similarities amongst them. I think that I have it figured out. The posts are almost all about personal matters that I have going on in my life right now. Typically, I have a very hard time talking about myself, and I am sure that that is part of it. But I believe the real crux of this conundrum is that they are posts written by me in order to work through some hellacious events. Think of them as therapy if you will.
Did I ever intend for my blogs to be therapy? No, I did not. When I think about it however, I think that there is some of that in there. I created them in order to express my thoughts and opinions on things that interested and affected me. I have no problem spouting off on any subject that I find interesting. I DO have a problem opening up about myself. In fact, that has become orders of magnitude more difficult just recently.
I guess that I can be happy that I still do this. I really enjoyed sharing my thoughts about things. It simply feels like I need to reevaluate whether or not my heart is still in it. I feel like I have lots to say about current events, but the personal side just isn’t there anymore. I am curious as to the implications of this…
I am sorry. Tonight was supposed to be the night that I posted the blog about whom I admire and why. I was greatly looking forward to it, because not only was it a chance to heap my praises upon them, but because in the course of composing said list, I realized something about myself that I found very interesting. Today is not the day for that.
I have had some bad news on my mind.
I have been acutely aware of my thought process over the years, as well as the calamity it tends to leave in its wake. Given their obvious familiarity however, I tend to overlook these facets of myself.
It was recently brought to my attention how counter-productive and damaging that thought process can be. Periodically, this will happen, and I will ponder its consequences, vow to change them, and then as time goes on, I will have done nothing other than maintain the status quo. I often wonder whether or not I can change...
This brings me to the question (and topic of an upcoming blog post) of whether my thought process has been forged by nature or if it has been formed by my experiences. I will explore some of the biochemistry and prevailing thoughts on that topic in the aforementioned upcoming post.
The bottom line is always the bottom line, and the point that I wanted to address in this post was that if I don't change my thought process, then I will never have anyone or anything in my life to any significant or measureable degree. The need for a change to this behavior is obvious, yet I struggle to effectively change it.
With what any normal person would deem reasonable cause, I tend to be a fairly pessimistic person...in spite of my efforts to be otherwise. Naturally, this frustrates the jovial individuals based on the dichotomy of the situation. The main problem that I have related to this is that my percieved negativity wears down even the mightiest of souls.
What frustrates me has always been my inability to effectively explain the basis for my thoughts and actions. Perhaps its due to my intimate familiarity about them, but the truth is that I am rather dumbfounded. My attempts at explanation are completely ineffective and I don't know if this is because I can't explain them well, or if they fall on deaf ears. What I do know is that if I don't figure it out soon, then I might as well give up.
Well, Sen. Obama will be the next president of the United States. I have to admit that this makes me a little happy. He, and the rest of our elected leaders face challenges that are unlike any seen in our lifetimes. I won't go into a diatribe about these concerns at this point, as there will be many chances for this at a later date. I won't belittle our newly elected officials for what is surely to remain the status quo...Instead, I am going to espouse hope...
A hope for a country to return to its principles. This country was founded on principles so profound and forward thinking, those notions could never be recreated by any group of people in the entire world at any time in our modern history. During the history of our nation, we have lost sight of these principles. It is my hope that we return them. It is my belief that our leaders have lost sight of these. I believe that they lost the ability to think about problems as concepts, but rather, they think of them as small pieces. They attempt to fix these small parts, yet what they are failing to recognize these small parts are part of a greater whole. It is my hope that our newly elected officials will realize this.
A hope that this election shows people that we are part of a greater whole. Don't focus on differences, we are all people. I have a more scientific mind than most, but we, as people, really are the same. It isn't our skin color that defines us...it is our beliefs, experiences, and actions. I hope that people can throw aside their preconceptions, and work together. Mankind can be both the biggest plight to this planet. With the right outlook however, we, as citizens and stewards of this planet, can perform true miracles. I encourage you to think...to envision grand ideas. Only through these visions can America become a truly great beacon of what humankind is capable of.
And lastly a hope that our future will be brighter. I hope that our education system will be reformed and better funded. I hope that minorities can see past discrimination (both real and presumed) and achieve thier hopes and dreams for themselves and their families. I hope that the drug problems are addressed properly by treating the causes for drug use. I hope that people in need of medical care are able to obtain it. I hope that this country unites as one, and realizes that by changing themselves and accepting a higher level of personal responsibility, we can come together and create a country that our founding fathers would be proud of. I hope that people realize the importance of having hope. It doesn't matter what you want, what matters is that you do what is necessary to achieve it.
Good on you America. Good on you.
