| Thank you dearly for keeping the candle of goodwill kindling. I don't think I'll actually request (I'm not in NA so I don't know if it'd be trickier or something), but I'd take off of my chest the plight this year nonetheless if that's ok. In today's exchange rate, I receive around net USD1200 a month, and have around USD1150 of mandatory expenses. 440 (rent) + 75 (electricity) + 250 (mother's health insurance) + 250 (my part in monthly food expenses) + 70 (therapy) + 70 (gas). I can survive, but I can't do much, and more importantly, I need nothing bad to happen, else this can snowball. It was a rather cruel year. I spent around USD1500 over the last year on my elder dog's health issues. He had 3 surgeries, and while he survived those he ultimately deteriorated quickly over a week and passed away in early November. I still can't last a day without breaking down - he was, is, a brother to me. Part of the sum I mentioned was for his cremation service. During the year, I also had a HDD fail in a small time window where some of the projects I had the most emotional investment in were, without backups. I had to pay another USD500 to actually recover the data. Two tires flattened out in the span of 2 weeks, another USD330. Of course, things snowballed. Every month I need to pay one or two bills on credit to split it over the next year just so I don't get a loan. I think if I can make it to May, where I'll get around an extra salary, I can make do, but life is pretty miserable. And I had planned to get married early next year, so that's slipping off the table too. My fiancée supports me where she can emotionally, but she's unemployed too, trying to start a doc degree in Biology next year. While I need to support my mother, who gets next to nothing as retirement, at least her family's got her back while she lives with them. I hope everyone is, or gets to be, doing better than summarizing their year like this. It's hard to find days where I can try and study to hopefully better provide here. Be well, folks. |