Major Life Change

I think it was in 2006 or 2007 when I applied with Social Security for their Disability income. At the time, I was misdiagnosed and on the wrong medication, and I was having difficulty holding down any job, never mind one with a decent wage. I really needed the boost, and my mom found a Social Security legal advocate for me. He came to my apartment and "helped" me fill out the application for disability. Basically, what he did was ask me a series of questions so he could fill in the blanks himself. It was due to his advocacy that I ended up being approved for SSDI. Even when I was sitting in my living room answering the advocate's questions, though, I had in the back of my mind the promise to myself that I'd be on SSDI only as long as it took me to get mentally stable and back into the workforce. 

Over the years, especially since around 2018, I've made efforts to get back into working. For various reasons, my efforts failed. The biggest reason was that I was not as ready to do so as I thought I was. I'd put applications in places, but never follow up on them, and rarely received calls back from those applications. After a few weeks, my enthusiasm for working would wane under the influence of fear of working again, and I'd give up for a few months before something would inspire interest in working again. 

All of that has ended now. On the 29th of June, I applied with a company that provides solutions for clients seeking to protect their premises and such. I've done security-guard type work a couple times before. Once in the mid-late 90's for a company in North Carolina, after I graduated from Job Corps; I had to quit that job unexpectedly due to my living situation imploding. Later, in the Navy, I performed watches and such that included making patrols and logging events. I've always found security officer jobs rather easy, but not so boring that I'm falling asleep on the job, even if I'm up on a third shift after being awake all day the day before. 

I'll be starting my shift on Monday, and it's a full-time position. This is going to cut into my writing time a great deal, so it'll take me a few weeks at least to get into the habit of coming home and settling in to write. I'm also considering switching my writing time to the mornings before work—basically getting up at 03:00 or so to work until 06:00 before I have to start getting ready for work. We'll see what happens. I'm hoping to be able to at least keep up with the new writing schedule I set up since I was hired on at the security company.

As always, if you want to know more about what's going on, I'll have a post on my Patreon blog for those who are willing to sign up for the "Kneecaps" level.