When playing games, sometimes you get exactly the prompt you need.

[silveradept]

So the original idea behind the posting was to take a word and show off some icons you haven't used before. Well, I don't have icons I haven't used before. But I figured I could do something else with the word. Maybe a drabble or something.

And so what word should come up but "Help". Huh. Go figure.

I need help.

I need help because a professional salary is enough to take care of one person and their loans, but it's not enough to take care of two people and their animals, too. Even after trying to cut the expenses as much as possible.

I need help because I don't think I have any other marketable skills to offer to make up the difference. I don't draw, edit, or compose. About all I could theoretically do is write, and there are much better writers than me around.

I need help because I've been told that perfection is the acceptable standard at work, had it demonstrated that my manager will willingly invoke the discipline process for mistakes from the perfection, and then when I told my manager and her boss what the (clearly not acceptable) logical end-point of what those two things were telling me, they looked at me bemusedly and said "What are you going to do to fix your problem?" Thus, I need help because I'm at the whim of my manager as to whether there's more discipline, probation, or possibly dismissal, and that stresses me out greatly.

I need help because my animals are sick much of the time - diabetic dog, incontinent cat, dominance fights, shredding the treats, and all the rest. I need help to grieve over the cat that died earlier this year.

I need help because I can't spend time doing what I normally do to relieve stress, because the house requires repair, the yard requires maintenance, and there's no time, really.

I need help, even though I'm sure that what I'm talking about is problems of the first world, and there are so many other greater problems, and I'd like to be dictator for just long enough to make all of those problems go away, so that small problems really are the only problems that we have to deal with.

I need help because I have really low self-esteem about myself, and that what most people consider success, I simply consider Not Failing, so that when something that does look like failure happens, I take it personally and hard.

I need help, because I do my very best to show how much I don't need help, to seem like the ducks on the water just placidly floating along and not to show the furious paddling that goes on underneath the water to maintain that illusion. (I also know that most of you do the same thing and are trying not to show your own paddling, either. You're very good at it, I assure you.)

I need help. But I know full well that you probably need help, too, and don't have a whole lot to spare.

And the funniest thing is, what I do for work is help. I help people who are out of work apply for it, polish their documents, learn the tricks of the Internet and new systems, and go from unemployed to optimistic.

I help parents and children find the research they need, the entertainment they want, and the stuff that will likely change their lives in obvious and subtle ways.

I help people who get new devices make them work. I help people whose devices aren't working get back on track.

I can help. And I need help.

Help.

Comments

[syntheid]

I didn't get a chance to comment earlier, but I like what you've done with the prompt, and am glad it was suiting for you.

[silveradept]

It was kind of helpful to do it. Sometimes you get the prompt you need.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Eep.
*spares half an eye for the parts of the rest of the mindspace stirring in reaction to the matter of how much/quickly change takes place*

Roughly two points come to mind as being commentable upon, even if those comments are in fact unhelpful.

--

Perfection-requirement: Ultimately one is still competing with others who could be handling the same matter. If conditions are suffering from industrial revolution issues and there is no union/ombudsman/etc. to seek aid from, if the situation is straightforwardly untenable, then get out. What's done afterwards exists as hypothetically multitudinous potential, but the point itself probably cannot be expressed more simply than 'get out'. Get out, rather than get ground down and broken because you think you have to.

--

The second point: Dependants are luxuries. A large house and a yard are luxuries. Specifically for that last part, a yard (a garden? a courtyard? not quite sure what this refers to) exists for your pleasure; you do not exist for its pleasure. When you're eating a meal, if you're full, you don't hurt yourself by forcing yourself to finish everything on the plate--that's because the food is there for your sake, you're not there for the food's sake. If you're hurting yourself for the sake of the yard which you only have attached to your house for your own pleasure, your priorities are definitely backwards.

This point looks as though it's going to get split into two points instead of one. The yard-related one is easiest to deal with, though.

To make sure it's clear: A yard or garden is not a necessity. A yard or garden is a luxury, for if you have extra time on your hands and find having a yard or garden to look at and/or do things with as an enjoyable thing to invest that time in. If you can't relieve your stress because of the time taken by it, then let it be turned into a scorched-earth caldera or anything else as long as /you/, the person it is there for the sake of, get sleep and relaxation and whatever you actually need to stay healthy.

--

The matter of a house (compared to an apartment, say) large enough to require high levels of maintenace is very similar to the yard matter, but may impinge on the dependants matter, which could be problematic.

--

You hopefully are already fully aware of the issue of living beyond your means regarding taking on dependants. Consider the extreme issue of taking in fifty cats, one by one, off the street and trying to feed them all.

Consider a child. Offspring are existence to bring forth if one has the resources to support their life, their education, et cetera. If one cannot do so, yet creates a child anyway, the non-cruel action at that point is to arrange an adoption with an appropriate family, or pretty much any route which allows decent meals and an education and a financially stable lifestyle.

For an adult, it's simpler because other adults are in the same position as you regarding working for money to eat with. To take on another adult as a dependant is an act of luxury and/or charity which one has to be able to afford to do first.

For pets, it's the same issue as with the fifty cats... or, actually, the child as well. If you can't provide a stable financial lifestyle, then relocate the entities to people who can.

...And if an entity is a downward spiral which is going to end in destruction whether you're tethered to it or no, then, though it may be painful, cut yourself loose of it until you're light enough that you, at least, can swim (? fly? keep moving forward?) by your own power.

--

Is anything I have said above wrong?


M) ....

[scribe-of-stars.livejournal.com]

You ever want to talk, man, just use LJ's message thing and we'll figure out a way to chat in real-time from there. I'm not good for much besides talking right now, but I won't scrimp on what I can do.