much slower updates for a while

 Today's life lesson: do not hitch your wagon to a falling star.

-=0=-

 Life is being more than usually rough right now.  A water leak has created a problem in the bedroom on my side of the bed - my sore back and I spent the night on the futon in the living room instead of my two thousand dollar mattress on my eighteen hundred dollar bed.

It smells.

I can't fix it, my back is fucked up.

My wife can't fix it, her back is fucked up and she's healing from surgery to get it un-fucked.

I can't afford to pay someone to come in and fix it, all extra money is going to medical and dental bills.

 I'm having serious difficulty doing my job, yet we will be even more seriously fucked if I lose said job due to poor performance.  It's not easy for people like me to find work, either.  I am old, just seven years before most people in America plan to retire, and that's a big strike against me.  I have actual, real, honest-to-Phineas-Gage brain damage, I'm smart-but-also high-functioning-autistic, I have poor filters, I overshare, I am verbose and I type a mile a minute which means when I overshare I do it in QUANTITY and it can be overwhelming and off-putting.  

 So it would be smart for me to retain this job, since they've shown a willingness to tolerate all of the afore-mentioned shortcomings.

Somehow.

ˑ༄ؘ ۪۪۫۫ ▹▫◃ ۪۪۫۫ ༄ؘ ˑ and then a miracle occurred, Hurray! ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

 I could try meth.  Or a second or even third job.  I worked three jobs once, about twenty years ago, it sucked syphillitic camel balls.  

 One thing I really should do and no joke is to get back on Ritalin, and I would if I could, but I seemingly cannot obtain the necessary psychiatric / mental health / neurology care required - which is to say, a doctor who will take responsibility for managing the patient and their use of the drug, because it is a controlled substance.  My insurance (don't get me started!!) does not pay for such ongoing care.

 The only other alternative is "private payer" (me, out of my pocket, no money for that) or the local community healthcare / free clinic system.  I was in that for ten years.  It was epically frustrating, they managed to screw my brain up once on a drug which was very wrong for me, and in general I have not gotten anything but disrespect from that organization as a patient.  Good people there exist, but they are a small minority.

 So I gave up on them.  I had to, literally to protect myself.  There are no other neuropsych health care options available to me, in this place, under these circumstances.

 It seems "all I need" (haha) is loads more money to solve most of my problems but alas, I lack a rich uncle to come in and wash away my monetary problems with a money hose.  My adoptive family has been far more supportive than any distant blood relatives, but they have done all they can, I owe thousands of dollars to some of them which I've been unable to repay (yet) and I wouldn't dream of begging anything further from family.  They've all got challenges too, now.

 I used to have a lot more earning power, but I don't any more.  I'll probably never see six figures again, and I live in an expensive part of the nation.  Selling the house we live in now and moving to the mountains will help tremendously, but it will only help.  It won't let us retire, and all indications are that we will never be able to retire, but we might be able to work less hard if we can eliminate having to make mortgage payments.

 But even in that case, there will still be real estate tax, and insurance, and HOA fees (mostly road maintenance and fire mitigation), and unless we get really lucky and score a fully off-grid property, electricity and occasional propane delivery as well, a savings account for leach field maintenance or septic tank pumping and water well maintenance - many costs that don't even exist down in the city.

 It's funny: when I was a young hacker, it was patheticaly easy to make a lot of money illegally, and you could even do it in ways which (you could tell yourself) were ethical; 

"it's not like robbing the corner liquor store, where the impact will be
felt by individuals. It's more like robbing a bank - where every account
is insured - at night, when no one will be terrified and no guns are necessary."

 At least, that sort of thining was what a great many young hackers told themselves in the 80s and 90s.  A lot of people got away with a lot of crimes.  A lot of others did not, got caught, received prison sentences, mostly got them commuted, and subsequently transformed themselves into "security consultants".  Those people are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s now, and some of them are my family and friends and peers.  Some of them are very successful, running their own businesses.  It is much harder to be "a stainless steel rat in the stainless steel wainscotting of modern society"* now, than it was when I was in my foolish youth.  Sadly, it is much easier to get caught doing "more ethical" crimes, but the least-solved crimes - crimes of violence - are of course morally indefensible, not to mention dangerous.

 So I think, as smart as I am, I will assume that I am not smart enough to be a super-villain or any other sort of un-caught crook, and seek other means to fill my coffers.

 The problem now is that everything I know how to do which would enable me to convert human time/labor into money - and I know how to do a thousand things - most of it is currently very painful or impossible for me to attempt, and I am unwilling to take opioid painkillers.

  I need a meteorite... made of something expensive and rare... just big enough to make it through the atmosphere but not so big as to leave much of a crater... to land in my back yard.  And kindly not bury itself too deep, either.  Yes, that would work, and it's just as fucking likely as some of the MISfortunes we've had to deal with over the past few years so kindly un-lock those dusty, disused, cob-webbed thighs you cursed Fates, and drop some sugar on me for a change.

EDIT: it turns out meteorites are so valuable - intrinsically - you don't need it be made out of a valuable material like gold.  However, the most valuable (because rare) space rocks are a stony-iron type called 'pallasites', or any of the ones knocked off of Mars or the moon (yes, really).  You can hunt for them with a metal detector if you have a lot of time on your hands.

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* see also: "The Stainless Steel Rat" by Harry Harrison