The home of chicken & waffles & whatever.

Hey, if anyone missed previous posts, I'm in a pretty dire situation. I got laid off from my last job in August, and despite collecting unemployment, the unemployment office isn't nearly giving me enough to pay off all my expenses. I've tried desperately searching for a job, and I managed to pass assessments for a government job back in November, but despite me filling out onboarding paperwork, they've yet to get back to me about an interview that they promised, and other people I talked to who applied to this organization said it could be months before they get back to me.

Meanwhile, I only have a few weeks' worth of unemployment payments left, I have a novel that I've yet to publish because editing is going slower than molasses in winter, and I've been applying to other jobs as a stopgap measure, but nobody's accepted me despite the fact that I have a bachelor's degree and nine years' worth of uninterrupted job experience and several transferable skills. I've been feeling depressed to the point of being suicidal because I feel like this society places too much value on money and finances as a metric of success and I can't find a viable means of income. If anyone has any advice on how to make good money, I'd appreciate it. Just DON'T recommend stock trading to me. Someone on Reddit tried to recommend that to me, and I rejected that because 1. I really have no interest in doing that, and even if I did, 2. I feel like it's too much risk for too little reward.

I don't know if anyone here works in construction or knows anyone who works in construction, but as an advocate for mental health improvement, I felt this needed to be shared.

So today, something terrible happened at work: I mentioned to a chaplain that I'd had - fleeting - suicidal thoughts on Wednesday, and Health Services overreacted, called the medics and had me involuntarily committed to the psych ward of a local hospital for a few hours. I swear, I've had it UP TO HERE with my job.

OK, I gotta confess: just a couple of hours ago, thinking about the pandemic and the new variant and all the associated fear and paranoia and crap, I wanted to shoot myself. Then, suddenly, I was driving, and this song came on. I was so moved by it that all of a sudden, I felt better. I hope that whoever's reading this takes this as a message that all hope is not lost and that it's important to have faith. Once again, Merry Christmas!

Anyone who's followed me long enough knows that I don't usually talk about personal matters here. However, something that one of my friends told me while I was hanging out with him and his girlfriend made me feel sad, and I just needed to let it out.

Anyways, here's the thing: there's this woman I've known since 2015 who was also one of my coworkers at this retail store I worked at. , She's a really good friend of mine, even being one of my favorite people. She's also been engaged to a guy since 2018 (I think), and from what my friend and his girlfriend told me, this particular guy has...well, they didn't flat out say he was abusing my woman friend, but I learned that this guy has such bad anxiety that he left two different jobs in the span of a month, and he acts neglectfully towards her, often asking for things without giving much - if anything - in return.

The big reason I'm saying this is because this woman really matters to me. Not only has she given me plenty of hugs, but she's also invited me over to a Friendsgiving event, and when I discussed some deep, dark mental health stuff with her - including the fact that I had considered killing myself last year - she not only didn't judge me for it, but she gave me some really big hugs and not only reminded me that I had value to this world, but that there were people who would genuinely miss me. I don't want this woman to suffer, and I especially don't want her fiancé to end up hitting her or anything like that, but at the same time, I fear saying or doing the wrong thing. I'd greatly appreciate any help I could get on this matter