On the Subject Of Job Hunting With An Employment Gap You Could Drive A Truck Through

I have decided that I have had it with the Social Security Administration. This denial of benefits and subsequent appeal situation has gone on long enough. This was started in July of 2014, and it is now 2015 and going on June. That is a year that this has been occupying my time and effort and thoughts. I have finally been informed that my face to face hearing has been set…finally. I figure I have a 50/50 chance. I will either win the appeal or I won’t. If I do not win the appeal, I have decided that this has taken up enough of my time and emotional resources which could be placed elsewhere where they may actually produce something other than a feeling of spinning wheels. I will not appeal a 2nd time because that would likely result in the need for legal services which I cannot pay for, and would never ask my mother or father to do so either.

I may be guilty of grandiose thinking, but I have bipolar disorder so that does happen, but I have started job hunting because I used to work as a payroll assistant or whatever title they gave it. The duties are almost the same from company to company. I enjoyed the interaction with people, I liked the structure of the position, I enjoyed training backups albeit sometimes frustrating, but, in general, I really liked to work at something other than trying to keep my apartment clean, and the laundry done. Besides that, I worked out how much I “make” per hour on Disability and it is $6.80 per “hour”. That’s not even minimum wage. It is scandalous. I paid my taxes just like everyone else when I was working, and that included a 6.25% bi-weekly contribution to Social Security.

However, now I have a dilemma. I have a pretty decent resume that could use some rewriting and formatting, but my last position ended quite badly in 2007 which is right before the economy tanked. Now I find myself in my 40’s looking for a position that will pay me what I am actually worth based on experience and skill level. I mean, I use Linux as my home operating system, and have managed to make the Windows programs I need to run on it, and Windows does not play well with Linux and Apple, forget it. So, I have an employment gap the size of a Mack truck in my work history, not to mention the fact that I cannot easily explain it away by saying I was raising a family or something equally acceptable. No, I have to have a “severe” psychiatric illness that took about 5 or maybe more years to stabilize. Employers say they abide by the ADA, but in many cases this simply isn’t true. 

Adderall

What does one say when the reason for their employment gap is illness, particularly mental health issues? “Hi, my name is blah blah, and the reason for the employment gap is convalecense from a personal illness”. The the recruiter asks if you are cleared to work, and even if you answer in the affirmative, you have just lost that job before you possibly even secured an interview. Another question I have received recently is “Is there any reason that you would not pass a pre-employment drug test”? Yes, there is. I take Adderall for ADD, and it is 4 amphetamines bound by a HCl salt. I have no idea if the metabolites from that medication will show up as a positive for meth or if they will show up as metabolites of amphetamines. I also take Klonopin; yet another positive test.

Klonopin 2mg

I am screwed, or so it feels. I am so accustomed to both drugs that I have an addiction to Klonopin, and the Adderall that helps me focus has little to no effect except to wake me up a bit. I have been on these medications for so long that I have become attenuated to them. I feel very few, if any, side effects from them. I do not get “high” off of them. I have worked while on them. But, believe me, being on medication designed to treat mental health issues are a real game changer, especially if the recruiter can identify it as such in the initial interview. And then there’s the whole problem of not being quite up to snuff on some of my work skills. I can still use Office with a good degree of proficiency, I can run a Linux machine, Windows is not a problem as I started with Windows 3.1 way back in the 90’s. I just have to find a way to say that the absence was due to illness without saying it was from illness. Seems a catch-22 to me. 

Arrangement

Since I did not write this amazing poem, please leave all comments on the author’s blog….Thank you!

Poesy plus Polemics

“Still Life on a Shelf”
Painting by Arline Wagner
From fineartamerica.com

put the pieces of life
on a prominent shelf
objets d’art
clad in sentiment
bouquets of dreams
in a celadon vase
statuettes cast in
poses of memories
bright lacquered boxes
of velvet relationships
failings engraved on
a silver-chased urn
oaken bookends
in flank of experience
hand-sewn and bound
by the fingers of years

put the pieces of life
on a prominent shelf
that posterity may
stand and study
engendering either
respect or reproach
as the case may be
judgments of time
being quite
unpredictable

put the pieces of life
on a prominent shelf
a collection
uniquely acquired
in practice of privacy
ready at last
in their stillness
for public display
careful set within
lyrics of poetry
sworn to the truth

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"Alone" ~ Edgar Allan Poe

“Alone” ~ Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were ~ I have not seen
As others saw ~ I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov’d, I lov’d alone.
Them ~ in my childhood ~ in the dawn
Of a most stormy life ~ was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold ~
From the lightening in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by ~
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Desert Song

I did not write this piece of verse. Please leave any comments on the blog of the talented author of this post.

In Memoriam: Selection From Letter To Niike ~ Nichiren Daishonin

How swiftly the days pass! It makes us realize how few are the years we have left. Friends enjoy the cherry blossoms together on spring mornings, and then they are gone, carried away like the blossoms by the winds of impermanence, leaving nothing but their names. Although the blossoms have scattered, the cherry trees will bloom again with the coming of spring, but when will those people be reborn? The companions with whom we enjoyed composing poems praising the moon on autumn evenings have vanished with the moon behind the shifting clouds. Only their mute images remain in our hearts.Though the moon has set behind the western mountains, we will compose poetry under it again next autumn. But where are our companions who have passed away?

~ Nichiren Daishonin circa 1280 C.E. written to Niike Saemon-no-jo, an official in the Kamakura Shogunate

On this Memorial Day, please do not lament the loss of loved ones, but rather, celebrate their lives and be reminded of how much they meant to your heart.

You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things to compete. You can just be an ordinary person, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.

Please post any comments on the original poster’s blog. Thank you!

Don Charisma

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«You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things to compete. You can just be an ordinary person, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.»

— Sir Edmund Hillary

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Charisma quotes are sponsored by DonCharisma.com – you dream it we built it … because – “anything is possible with Charisma”

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I Just Don't Understand

This is going to be short. I do not understand why people have to be so nasty and hurtful to others when it is actually they themselves who are the ones who are unhappy with their lives. If you are unhappy with your life, do not blame others, do not respond to emails meant to remedy problems with harsh words designed to discourage and belittle, just fix your life so you are not unhappy. If it is a person whom you are supposed to trust and rely on, and they betray that trust in some way, take a good long look at why you are still in that relationship. Take a hard and sometimes painful action to return yourself to happiness in some other way, but don’t deliberately set out to use your words as swords to belittle, discourage, disrespect, and hurt a person who has nothing to do with why you are unhappy. That is not something I understand. 

Time For Another Random Poem

From Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime:  “Sunset” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to the earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs ~

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

~ Translated by Robert Bly

Ruminations On Shame

Today I had an appointment with my psychiatrist to discuss what to do about my medication while I am in appeal with the SSA about my disability benefits. My mom met me there since she has taken financial responsibility for medication that I could not afford ( thank you so much, Mom).

Of all of the days for the truly psychotic to be out and about. Not that I haven’t been psychotic from time to time, but my mom just doesn’t see it like I do. It is not part of her world. I do not honestly know if I felt more ashamed for being a part of that group, pissed off at the security guards for laughing at this man who was clearly in distress, or afraid my mom would see where I live sometimes.

I don’t really know how each of those reactions makes me feel. I know what the security guards did was cruel and disrespectful, but having mental illness is not their world; it is not one of the filters they see the world through. I feel very bad that I felt shame at being among the people who have had psychotic breaks and/or other severe psychiatric incidents. The very fact that I would feel ashamed to be me or any other person struggling with a chronic mental problem is unacceptable, yet that is what I felt. I thought ‘What a day for the ‘nuts’ to come out…..and then I realized that is how some people see me. Now we have real guilt and shame going on. 

I also did not want my mom to see the world I inhabit. I didn’t want her to see how bad mental illness can be; how scary for both patient and providers, how embarrassing it is when you come back down and people tell you how out of it you were, the list goes on. I desperately did not want my mom to see that. She’s seen enough.

The person who needs to see it (mental dysfunction) is my father. Then he might see and understand better how my world looks to me and why I react the way I do periodically. 

I just really try hard to not expose too many people to my world. I find that requires lying (hiding) how mental I am. If I trust you enough, then you might get to see me in all my psychotic bipolar splendor (please insert sarcasm here).