busybee fluffy rambles

Unemployment stuff

When I left my job last June I was technically fired, under the justification that I was unable to do the work the way they wanted me to. This was supposed to make it so that I could collect unemployment and so they didn’t have to provide me any meaningful severance package, and technically it was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act but not in a form where I could actionably do anything about it under those terms (or maybe I could have, but it’s too late now anyway).

Because of the reason of my termination, the Washington State unemployment office made my determination “pending adjudication,” and it took them nearly a year before they’d start to accept my weekly claims. Of course, when they finally did, they were only allowing me to submit claims for the final two or three weeks of my benefit period.

It took a lot of convincing them that I was trying to submit my claims during the benefit period but they were simply not allowing me to due to the pending status, and finally they decided that they’d “let” me backfill my claims for the previous year… and buried me in paperwork, with an impossibly short deadline.

I did everything I could to satisfy that deadline, and they started to pay out my benefits! Yay!

Then they decided that I wasn’t actually eligible after all, and decided to start threatening me with legal action if I didn’t pay them back immediately!

Another fun thing is that the benefits they paid out had federal tax withholdings, but their repayment demands included what had been withheld for taxes. So now I get to pay them back more than they’d sent me, and just hope that I can get a refund on it with my taxes next April.

They’re also occasionally asking me about my disability issues, sending me the same questionnaire, which I still fill out in response, which they never reply to.

So anyway the impression I get is that since I’m too disabled to work, that also makes me too disabled to receive unemployment. However, I’m not so disabled that I immediately qualify for disability benefits, so, that’s fun too.

Disability

So on that note, I applied for disability back in May. Today I checked on the status of my application and they’re still waiting for me to send in my medical records. That’s totally my fault, as I’d forgotten they were waiting for that. So I quickly printed off everything I’d collected and mailed it in to them.

Then I discovered that my printer hadn’t printed all my records because it silently failed due to insufficient toner, and in particular it was the most important ones that weren’t in the packet I mailed off! Sigh.

Anyway I’ve ordered more toner which should arrive next week and hopefully I can send an amendment to my medical records. The Social Security Administration was expecting that they wouldn’t be reviewing my application until October anyway.

Also I want to update who they should be my point of contact to vouch for my disability issues. I don’t see any way of formally doing that, but that information is part of the cover sheet for the medical records submission, so hopefully the updated information I provided there will be acknowledged. Or not.

Finances

So, having a bunch of money show up in my checking account and then immediately get clawed back has messed up my budgeting mechanism, so that’s fun. For now I’m at least making enough to sustain myself with my passive investment income, and if things get any worse I can tell the investors who manage my portfolio to start to switch to “income” rather than “growth” and that’ll take some pressure off too.

Meanwhile, I’ve lowered the prices on my music commissions and have also been advertising said commissions in more places. I’m not getting a lot of interest on those.

Hospital grievance

A month ago when I went to the hospital with severe respiratory issues I was treated very badly. I submitted a grievance. They investigated themselves and came to the conclusion that they’d done nothing wrong. Go figure.

Medical miscellani

There is an apparent link between fibromyalgia and high triglycerides. My doctor was insisting that I needed to get my triglycerides down to see if that’d help with the fibromyalgia, even though the studies show that high triglycerides are a symptom, not a cause. After a bunch of shenanigans and frustrations I don’t want to get into, I finally got on Repatha, which reduced the numbers immediately.

It has done nothing for my fibromyalgia.

My insurance has only approved Repatha for a few months, and when that approval runs out it costs… much more than I can afford. And as soon as I’m off it, my numbers will skyrocket again, and doctors will start blaming me and my diet for it again, without fucking asking me what it is that I eat or how much I exercise.

Meanwhile, the copay on my blood thinners (Xarelto) and my HRT (transdermal estradiol) are also stupidly high, and my insurance keeps on trying to get me to switch to warfarin (which requires weekly monitoring) and a different formulation of estradiol (which doesn’t work right for me, which is why I’m on the formulation I’m on). Or maybe they want me to go back to pills, which were fairly ineffective and also contributed to my clotting disorder.

Socialization

I’m having trouble finding and keeping friends on VRChat, and the friends I usually spend time with aren’t on as much anymore. Also embodying my fursona hasn’t actually been, like, sustainably Cozy after all.

I did end up reconnecting with my friend from ages ago (referenced in a recent musicpost) and it was a lot of fun. We did a little karaoke on VRChat. I hope I can see him some more. We’ve had some fairly similar struggles although they’ve resolved very differently.

Music

Choir starts up again in a couple weeks, which will be nice, but my voice is still fucked up from the severe bronchitis last month. I’m doing my vocal exercises again now with the hope that things clear up by the time choir starts again. Fortunately my tenor range is mostly fine, and it’s just alto that’s screwy right now. Unfortunately alto is the range I sing in for my own stuff, and right now I can’t seem to record the vocals I want to record for my own things.

On that note I really want to start working on that album I keep saying I’m gonna work on. But with my voice being messed up maybe I should work on the other album I keep saying I’m gonna work on.

I also really want to reorganize my basement/studio area though. It’s such a mess and I hate spending time down there. I kinda wish I’d gone ahead and built that backyard studio building after all, but that’d cost way more than I can justify spending right now.

I definitely don’t have the attention span or physical fitness necessary to do that though. Lots of stuff needs to get moved around and I only have limited “swap space” with which to do it. I should probably at least try to actually plan the space out or something.

Pain

And of course, as implied above, I’m definitely not in any great shape regarding my chronic pain issues. My usual fitness activities have been kind of off-limits, too:

• Stepmania hurts my knees too much anymore
• Beat Saber fatigues my arms and wrists too much
• It’s been way too hot to take walks outside
• Gardening is making my allergies go absolutely apeshit

Gaming

I was getting overwhelmed with my “daily challenge” games like Squaredle, Oh My Word!, and Good Sudoku, and I decided to take a break from those. That’s been good for me.

I’ve also found that playing video games has been too hard on my wrists. I’m up to the end of the main quest in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and I’m finding myself not being motivated to actually finish it, because it’s just too button-mashy for me, and the non-main-quest stuff just hasn’t grabbed me enough to want to keep doing it.

I think I’d rather be focusing on playing the smaller games made by my friends, and maybe streaming it on Twitch just so that hopefully I can help them to get some visibility.

I’d also like to be making games again, too, but, y'know. Pain shit.

Driving anxiety

And of course I’ve been having trouble driving anywhere, because I get in the car and then start to have a bit of anxiety which leads to dizziness which leads to anxiety and so on. I’m basically able to go to the grocery store and pharmacy, and if I push myself I can get myself out to see nearby friends. Hopefully I’ll be able to drive to choir, because my carpool buddy moved to a different neighborhood so they’re no longer an option, and hopefully driving to choir helps me to remember that I can, in fact, drive. Like I’ve been doing that for literally 30 years and have never been the cause of an accident.

I also really want to be able to go a bit further; that friend of mine lives down in Puyallup (20 miles South of me) and I’d like to be able to visit him.

tl;dr

Basically, I’m still a mess and I don’t see that changing any time soon.