Unless a miracle occurs in the next 48 hours, I’m going to be on disability or unemployed next week. The new regime at work requires my position to be 9-5 in an office and I’m not physically capable of that currently. After five years I have a near-instant ultimatum to do the Dilbert or leave.
The prognosis for my neurofeedback treatment is that I should be in the period now where improvement occurs, but that’s roughly a two-month period according to my practitioner. That’s not an acceptable timeframe for my bosses. So, depending on bureaucracy and things I don’t understand well enough to predict, I’ll either go on temporary disabiliity and re-evaluate at some point for possible full employment, or just lose my job.
Either way my income is about to dive. I have debt and I’m bad with money, and all the therapeutic interventions require cash too. I’m also bad at filing claims, with the result that I’m way behind in getting reimbursed for things. And anything that might speed recovery requires yet more cash.
This has left me in the unfortunate position of being that middle-aged geek who has to ask his family for an allowance. I don’t enjoy the stereotype, but it beats actual poverty. I shall try to feel lucky about that part and rise above the shame.
Be My Blog 
Sneaking it, with farce.
Your bosses are being such dicks.
But incidentally: If your brain’s Dammit Ugh neurocenter is anything like mine, you will be able to coax it, sideways, into doing Paperwork Things (like filing those health insurancy things; or in my case, the Alaska Permanent Fund paperwork, or anything of the sort) by sort of… sneaking it, with farce. Like: going “LAH LAH LAH I AM GOING TO AN IMPORTANT GIG!” (queuing up “Peewee’s Big Adventure” theme) and putting on a dress shirt and stuff; but instead of going to some dumb office, take the Hassle Paperwork et al to a diner, and sort of non-chalantly fill them out there. (Variables: a diner you know vs a diner you don’t; with laptop vs without; with Horrible Code To Rewrite, whether I should bring it as hardcopy vs not.)
Also, repeatedly saying “oh it’s just some dumb piece of paper no-one will ever read, not even some data entry person.”
Often I don’t even get the Necessary Thing done that way, but at least I have some incredible epiphany about how it’s actually breathlessly easy and I just need to copy off the serial number from my water heater, and wham, it’s done, put a stamp on it, in the mail.
Or: I focus on some repetitive part, like filling in my SSN in every single blank for it on all the various pages, skipping everything else.
And/or: I plead with a friend to do it for me, or at least walk me thru it, in return for which I make them hummus, or pose as their secretary and do their Necessary Things like tell the New York Times to stop calling, or something equally madcap and/or against the Geneva Convention.
I really want a superfun pill that makes things effortless; but in the meantime, I fake it with this kind of approach.
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Re: Sneaking it, with farce.
I like hummus. And pandas.
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You can always join me skimboarding on the beach all day, then progress to snowboarding all winter. That is how I am combating gainful employment.
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i’m sorry.
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Time to try and look at the glass half-full instead of half-empty and all those other cliches that, as much as we might want to resist it, do make sense. Not having health insurance wouldn’t be an option either, and private insurance will rape you silly, so maybe figuring out how to remain with the company long enough to figure out Plan B would benefit you best in the long run.
Life always reminds us it’s two steps forward and one step back when we need it to be the other way around.
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Without me the installer diskettes would be ON FIRE
I hereby predict <a href=
“http://use.perl.org/~TorgoX/journal/2673”
>the immediate future of your boss’s computer system…
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Lawsuit time? Forcing you to leave because they won’t give you suitable working accomodations sounds like an ADA violation to me. But either way, it sounds like it’s going to be a lot of stress for you, so I’m sorry to hear that.
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