Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#261

Post by tashmahalic » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 12:31 AM UTC

thrwtllwy wrote: post #123

ytNumbers wrote: post #72

I've never had a medical condition that took me out of the workforce. It's sad that you've been dealt a bad hand in life. It's got to be hugely frustrating. You seem to have (correctly in my opinion) concluded that given your current limitations, there is no point in you applying for jobs. Most people who have been out of work for a year never return to the workforce. The majority of them might enjoy a "retired" sort…

I understand where you’re coming from but, while pain is always present, it follows a pattern of flare-ups which aren’t easy to predict. For example, I had a splitting migraine for 63 days straight, starting the day after Christmas this year. It took my neurologist designing a migraine-breaking drug cocktail to break it.

What’s in this cocktail? (sufficient to reproduce it)

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#262

Post by nightsd01 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 1:51 AM UTC

You have big problems. How do big problems get solved? The best approach is to take the big problems and break them up into smaller problems, divide and conquer. Get out a whiteboard and go over your problems logically, as if you were a different person looking at your life from the outside. The key problem in your case seems to be a lack of money. My best advice is to solve it and quickly by finding a job. You don’t have to find the perfect job, just find a job and then work on improving things step by step. It might not even be in tech, there are call center type jobs you can easily do from home. But my advice would be to find a coding job. Don’t try to completely switch fields right now, you’re not in a good place to do that, try sticking with what you already know and build up from there. Take a course in modern web development maybe and brush up that resume. Getting your life together is hard and it takes a lot of work. But luckily you have a lot of options. Try taking things step by step, day by day. It doesn’t need to be the perfect job, just a job that pays the bills. Once you have your basic needs met, then you can begin to focus on finding an even better job, learning more skills, becoming healthier. Ultimately, Rome wasn’t built in a day. The one thing you shouldn’t do is give up, even if things seem hopeless, it’s just because you haven’t found the right plan yet :)

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#263

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 3:37 AM UTC

tashmahalic wrote: post #260

cjbgkagh wrote: post #94

I went through a very similar thing with ME/CFS and hEDS (which has a chronic pain component). Before I even knew what was I knew that I was on the decline. I was doing ok at work but my ability to maintain a working pace kept diminishing. I went from full time to part time to less than part time to the occasional contracting. I ended up having to do a bit of a Hail Mary to try to save myself. I took a bunch of stimu…

I can relate. Is there a way I can message you? (maybe via Reddit?)

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#264

Post by Flenser » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

A way to make a few bucks for your side projects might be to do polls/surveys and get paid via Paypal or Amazon vouchers:

https://www.householdmoneysaving.com/free-paypal-money/

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#265

Post by highmastdon » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

Maybe, maybe not, but worth a try. Consult a medical doctor. You might have a major vitamin D deficiency? https://vitamind3-cholecalciferol.com/how-to-estimate-your-v...

As always, consult a medical docter, don’t rely on internet medical advice blabla etc

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#266

Post by epgui » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

epgui wrote: post #203

TimPC wrote: post #89

I’m sorry you live in one of the worst countries in the world to be disabled in. While this can be challenging everywhere, the US is especially bad at providing adequate support, both financially and otherwise. What might help you is looking for a job with part time responsibilities and part time wages and investing full-time into that job if you need to to keep up. If this is viable for a tech role you’re likely to…

> I’m sorry you live in one of the worst countries in the world to be disabled in. The US is such a bad country by almost any fundamental metric... I think it's just a matter of time before its economic privilege implodes.

My comment was not popular, but it's hardly unreasonable. Even the FT writes:

> While US political risk in global comparisons is still relatively low (it ranks 85 out of the 127 countries tracked by Rosenberg), it is now by far the highest of any developed market. Only countries such as Turkey, Colombia, Mexico and Israel look anything like the US within the OECD nations. Even more worrisome is the fact that the change and volatility of key metrics, including the risks of social and government instability, political violence and even the risk to democracy, make the US look much more like a developing nation than a developed one — let alone the supposed leader of the free world.

https://www.ft.com/content/7b40420e-c678-4400-a4bd-ccdbbc445...