One of the things I'm glad about is that the US government reformed the Welfare system during the Clinton Administration. I think that these programs should be a hand up and not a hand out.
One of the things I once hears an African American women say was, “Maybe if we feed and clothe the minorities, they'll love us. Sadly, I must contend that the outcome was not such in many years.
Years ago, I had a paper route and one of the families on my route was a welfare mother whose husband was an alcoholic. She also had a son who I got into a fight with. They owed me three weeks of money for the paper and when I attempted to collect, instead of getting the money I was owed I got a lecture about how, “I want to see the day, when all children will respect their elders.” I dumped her family from the paper routes.
Many people who were raised on welfare as welfare babies, also did not have job skills and worse than that many of them were bullies. I know about it because I grew up in an integrated neighbor hood where we had quite a few minority children and some of these classmates of mine were the worst people. Some of them were sexual degenerates as well as being bullies.
Workfare has simply failed most of the people who were on it and there are certain reasons for that. One reason is that companies won't hire an adult who has no work experience. I had a similar problem myself years ago.
When I got my Masters degree, I went looking for work but I had a trouble finding it. My father kept telling me to go to job agencies and so-called “headhunting firms”, but I found out they won't work with you right out of college and even if you have an advanced degree especially with no suitable work experience.
I was lucky to find work at all. And the truth is that I've found my Master's degree to be unmarketable recently. I was only able to find work after I went to a technical school that trained me in computer programming.
Now I'm sure the Master's helped my nail down my first big job and I'm sure the training was necessary and aided me during my employ but right now I simply needed to be retrained again. I took a course in freelance writing and that's one of the reasons I'm writing this document.
A second social program I want to look at is Social Security Disability. I'm on it myself right now. I hope it's a hand up to me and not a hand out.
I don't subscribe to the “world owes me a living theory.” I believe that come the day when I can work again I should go out looking for work and I'm in the process of doing such right now.
One time, I heard a fellow SSDI consumer say, “The government will simply have to take care of me for the rest of my life.” And that attitude holds a lot of people back from actively trying to rehabilitate themselves. I believe that I'm redeemable and I'm hoping and I actually believe that I will find work when I solve the problems with my psychology.
I finished the writing course in just over four months and I had one year and five months to complete it and I received an A in the course. I really don't want to waste any time. I'm fed up of the situation I'm in.
Every IQ and psychometric test I take says that I should be a world-beater. I've taken a number of these tests and they revealed I actually have over five different career paths open to me, including being a writer, a psychologist an architect, a private investigator and a sculptor. So theoretically, I should be gainfully employed and probably quite wealthy.
I really think that writing is putting my best foot forward so that's what I'm concentrating on for the meantime. I'll also need to get some clothes and I'll need to make myself look marketable for a boss to hire me. I need to come off as savvy as I am and I do have considerable writing skills. First impressions count and you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.
In retrospect, I've had to rethink a lot of my early beliefs in life. I had to back off the idea that Orthodox Judaism was good for me. In truth, it's caused me a lot of aggravation that was unnecessary,
My involvement in religion has caused me a lot of problems and years of time that I could have spent working on my university studies and I could have graduated at the age when most college graduates go out looking for work.
Time is precious and so are the ways you spend your time. I once had an interview with a company that asked me what my SAT scores were. I took those exams many years ago. I told them I had a Master's degree despite the fact that I didn't get the minimum grade they wanted on the mathematics section. I told them, that I got the math requirement in graduate school waived because I took an exam that I passed. They simply informed me, “What you did then [in high school] counted.” That statement was the end of story.
You have to be careful how you invest your time and money. Both are extremely precious and time is money, don't be fooled that it isn't. So invest both wisely. If you get just that from this document, I'll be happy. And hopefully, the time I will still be on SSD is going to end with my successful return to work, partially because of the sales of this piece.
