[timewizard]

> Through therapy, ketamine treatment, and building my own AI-assisted mental health tools

Those do not sound like a pathway to mental health.

> staying in cheap motels when I can afford it.

From what you've said you clearly can't afford it.

> What would YOU do in my situation to break the cycle?

Get a regular job. It's going to feel like a giant step backwards, but, this is what you need right now. You need to stabilize yourself and have some reliable work and housing in your life. You need a routine. You need to socialize with your co-workers. You need to build all of the things that are currently missing in your life. You cannot build a bridge to a fantasy.

> I’m willing to work. I know I can earn 3-4x more doing freelance tech, but I can’t do that from a car.

You can earn 3 to 4x more doing construction or day labor. Which, given where you live, is going to be far more reliable and afford you more opportunities to matriculate into better positions.

> I’ve thought about renting office space, finding roommates, even setting up a GoFundMe, but I need actionable ideas, not just hope.

Those ideas aren't even hopeful. I think your endpoints have been moved and you didn't notice.

> I just need to stay local for my kids

We go through all of the above to finally out with the fact you have dependents? I fear that you've just been mollycoddling yourself and not being honest or serious about your future.

I'll leave you with this. Wake up. There ARE fates worse than death out there and I hate to see you wake up to that kind of regret.

[bowsamic]

> Those do not sound like a pathway to mental health.

If you don’t consider therapy a pathway to mental health I’m not sure what could be

[balamatom]

There is no "mental health", other than in the eye of the introspector. What exists in objective reality, is the successful or unsuccessful performing of the assigned social role.

When you fail to fulfill your role, or when you consciously reject it, or when society simply has no role to offer you, the world around you begins to fall apart, and you find your mind adapting to the raw, unfiltered, unconditioned chaos that surrounds you in every unpredictable moment.

It's called madness. It's a natural response that a human has to the falling away of social bonds. One would like to believe that pre-industrial, non-totalizing societies knew a thing or two about the workings of that particular stable configuration of the human mind, and what role it can be made to fulfill in the collective "organism" of the community.

Our society, on the other hand, well... it simply blames you for being a "no good" person, and puts all the responsibility on you while robbing you of all power to resolve your situation. Because it's better that way - for everyone else, but you, the very person whose fault it most certainly isn't. Which is, fundamentally, unjust. But what can one do - we're all taught in childhood that "life's not fair", so that's exactly the kind of life we end up setting up for each other.

(FWIW, of those three "pathways", the only one I've personally witnessed to accomplish anything at all is the one that's the least socially accepted. We do remain, after all, subject to the pressures of natural selection. Sapienti sat.)

[timewizard]

"Therapy" and "going to therapy" are actually two different things. I don't read this as someone putting in the work, I read this as someone attempting to check the right boxes, and life simply does not work that way.

[jyounker]

I read this as someone giving a tiny bit of background information before they move onto the real question: How do I get housing?

[balamatom]

>We go through all of the above to finally out with the fact you have dependents

>We go through all of the above

I'm awfully sorry, but what the hell of the above did you go through just now? Reading a post about a situation?

Some damn empaths we have here, mind.

(FWIW, I stopped reading at "ChatGPT".)

[alligatorman]

You are misinterpreting what he wrote.

"We go through all of the above to finally..." means "We read everything you wrote before finally reading that you have dependents"

[balamatom]

I am interpreting what he wrote in exactly the same way as you.

There's a fellow hacker stranded in a bad place (unless the whole thread isn't just ChatGPT fishing for mentally concerned people to meatpuppet, or, more generously - learning about how humans react to fellow humans in dire straits) and the parent poster is whining about being made to read a thing.

[alligatorman]

Got it .. looks I misinterpreted your interpretation.