A lot has happened this past month. Not the first time in my life I have dealt with unrelenting garbage, but to top off an already fun month in my personal life, I blew the one last fuse I managed to keep going for my entire work life.
Whenever I have job issues and I want to give up and quit, I jump to my worst fear being losing my job. That being in big part because if I don’t find a job right away, I will lose my home. I have always lived paycheck to paycheck. I then have no family or anyone I can live with. My life goes into a turmoil that I really don’t have the ability to handle.
I have to have a job right? a home? all the material things? deal with horrible people all the time in the process of doing all that right? I’m not allowed to retire until I’m old and almost dead and have put enough money to maintain the lifestyle I built while working, right?
I also realized that as much as I thought I wanted human connection and relationships, it never works out for me. I only do truly well when I only have myself to look after (well, and my cat). I tend to be really generous, probably overcompensating so people will keep liking me, and I frequently get taken advantage of. The good relationships I do have I always fuck up by getting comfortable with them and letting them see my meltdowns. Even with other trans and autistic people I fuck things up.
Why don’t I just own what is supposed to be the worst case scenario – you know, living in a van down by the river?
Why is that bad? A lot of people do it, with really nice vans. A lot of neurodivergent people like me who have thrived in doing so.
I quickly realized that I would actually love that life. Most of my life, literally, most of my life, is spent sitting at my desk at home. I recently realized that I love bike riding and with an eBike I can power through my ME/CFS (oh yeah, diagnosed with that last week as well). I could live in a nice camper quite well. I could maybe go to the west coast where people are friendlier to weirdos like me, and just be me. It would be awesome to ride around the pacific northwest. If nothing else, I would be closer to Canada when the US ultimately eats itself.
So, I decided that I’m going to do that. I’ll try to hold out at my job for now, but for no more than 2 more years while I buy and build out a van to live in, and save what I can to get me as far as I can on a much simpler lifestyle. Hopefully I can also get my ex to give up and sell the house so I can add more to savings. I also am not going to wait until I’m old, or, you know, dead, before I can retire. I only need a full retirement income to pay for what I have, not what I actually want. So I guess you can call this an early retirement.
I have no clue what is going to become of the work crap, but I no longer care. I’m sure not going to hold back on making my feelings about the challenges I face, even if some are purely because I am not neurotypical. If they want to listen to me, fine. If not, fine. If they want to fire me, whatever. If it gets more stressful, I will just quit.
Of course my intrusive thoughts have kicked in, and I’m physically ill from thinking about this, but I do know for the first time in a long time that I’m going to be just fine. Maybe because I just fucking went ahead and bought her 🙂
Meet my girl, “Hecate”.
