I feel sick to my stomach. This is the reward I get for completing the next step of my latest meager attempt to be in business for myself. I submitted a 1023-EZ form after obtaining my EIN for the nonprofit. With the determination letter, if I'm approved, I should be able to apply for significantly more grants. What could go wrong?
At the end of the day, I'm trying to find a way to get paid. In a "perfect" world or one that made sense, the 1 in 3 people who have a substance use or mental health issue in the U.S. would be able to access and pay for counseling, and I'd be able to live a slightly-better-than-middle-class lifestyle as a result of working as long and intensely as I do.
Instead, we have this sick-care system and, in my estimation, wholly abhorrent and broken culture around what constitutes "help" and "healthy." I have to find a ways to capitalize on people who are otherwise being leveraged by systems that mostly seek to take advantage, enable (in the bad way), or obscure. I have to bother to explore nonprofit funding at all because I can't get empanelled with insurances, and for the life of me, I can't figure out if there's anything that I, in particular, am doing so horribly wrong to or with the people I'm attempting to work with.
I don't know if I can blame myself when people don't respond. Like, I've asked, no exaggeration, 6 or more times for a regular meet-up/base touch time each week so we can all be on the same page. No responses. Not from Hussain, not from our therapist, not from the old empaneling company, not from the new empaneling company. When I ask if password/login issues have been resolved, ignored for a week as well. This has happened for months.
What am I supposed to do about that? Fire everyone? I'm not asking for an unreasonable amount of time. I'm not doing so in a way that's like, "Hey you cunts, what the fuck is going on?" I feel like I'm in an absurdist cartoon. I cannot wrap my fucking head around why it is so hard to get people to even answer a fucking question or respond when spoken to.
If we dip into addiction counseling 101, this would fall into a category of "things I can't control." The things I can control, I'm putting the work into. I'm submitting the forms, paying the fees, and getting the numbers. I'm hiring new people and exploring hopefully smarter and better behaved options that will help me progress. I'm watching tutorial videos and reading infinitely obscure and confusing federal and state guideline garbage in desperate swing after desperate swing to get SOMETHING working in a way that hopefully doesn't bite me too hard in the ass when I fuck up a vital detail.
I want to abandon it all and just go up north and help my dad work his gravesite maintenance business. Of course, it's December.
Consider this something of a two-parter because I stepped away for several hours and my mood has shifted.
One of the blessings/curses of writing and having an online presence is that you can see, instantly, how much hasn't changed. You can feel how "hopeless" or "pointless" your goals, speculations, or feelings were in any moment, years ago, and how they have or haven't landed in what's manifesting for you currently.
Seemingly all of my "big" goals stay in a state of perpetual failure. The reason appears to be, I can't do it alone. Things like becoming genuinely off-grid, building certain "green" structures, experimenting with different business ideas based off of having the land, or the general "work for myself" goal that I've been miserable at for at least 10-15 years now depending on how you wish to consider saving from drug studies or the efforts made in service to the coffee shop and counseling.
I'm sensitive to protesting too much. My "comfort" levels, as far as incomplete and arguably bad words are concerned, have never been under genuine threat. I, perhaps in more of a desperate self-preservation and defiant fashion than I realized as it was happening, shifted my goals to buying and traveling to and seeing shit. I've never been under the illusion that you can fill the "meaning" hole at the center of your soul through spending money. I was getting self-conscious about the amount of time ticking by where I wasn't at least seeking entertainment, culture, or ever-smoothing of rough inconvenient edges.
The major sticking point is the being alone part. If I want to fuck off and drink every night and find some little rut with other Iceman Cometh types, I could start that tomorrow. I got whiffs of it waiting at the bar before the comedy show this weekend. If I want to "play nice" with immolation at dozens of demonstrably harmful institutions professing to help, I could have stayed at Groups or any of the other spots. If I just wanted to be some eccentric "artist" and fuck around all day on my instruments until I nailed "my sound" and "message," I'd spend considerably less time beating myself up trying to find the focus to pursue grants or conceive of creative ways of fixing my problems.
I've wasted, not precisely true, an incredible amount of time on people and endeavors that have taken me for granted, lost the faith, threw my effort and perspective in my face, lied to me, or otherwise tried to make it seem as though I'm in the wrong for trying, sacrificing, and continuing to hold myself to what's proving to be an ongoing incredibly difficult standard. I'd like to just blame myself and say something like "I signed up for it!" but it wholly obscures the horrific environment I'm plugged into.
In theory, I "should" be able to see different ways out. I have one brain. If I don't see something, it's an unknown unknown, then all I can do is spiral. If I try to get more people involved and all they do is shrug, ignore me, or contribute markedly worse information into the mix, the fuck am I supposed to do with that?
I'm comfortable entertaining the idea of failure and moving on. I don't absolutely have to succeed at everything I try, but if I fail, I wish it was for at least remotely reasonable things. I wish it didn't speak to what feel like larger more despotic and harrowing forces mauling our collective psyche about our prospects or responsibilities.
I spent more money today. I paid the $275 to get a tax-exempt determination letter. It still has to be determined, and they'll remind you on every other page there's ongoing reporting requirements as though you don't file your taxes every year already. Will it inch me "forward?" Who knows. It could as easily come back with some questions I can't answer or perfectly ridiculous hang up that requires appeals and new fees and numbers to wait on hold for hours to "fix."
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