#sucks because i've been paying in cash too and don't have any bills of service

[regular-lord-reckoner]

.....................i just found out that none of the payments i've been making for my therapy appointments have been going to my deductible

awesome

love that

[stumbleintothesun]

Life Rant

For the few people in here...sorry lmao this is long as hell.

Lately I've been feeling like...garbage. I know there's no one on this place that really follows me, so this is me posting to the void.

I have been dealing with a lot of health issues related to my mental health and weight. I've gained nearly twenty pounds in a year, and no matter what I do my weight doesn't budge. I work out regularly, Ive been trying to eat better but...my only thought is its because I'm working a desk job now - which I fucking hate with a fury. And I know my weight isnt the end of the world - it just really, really fucks with my mental health. I've always felt ugly. The only time I didn't was when I was super thin which I know is problematic - and I know that's part of my mental health...like my aunt died from an ED. And my mom definitely had/has an ED even if she's gotten much better about it in the past few years...

And I'm finally getting my face to clear up after wearing these masks for a year - a year! But I'm still dealing with the healing process and I'm anxious it will scar. I've worked this entire pandemic at a job I *hate* just to you know, finally pay off my student loans just go back to school so maybe I can do something I love. But even at 25 and providing for myself, I hardly got any financial help. The only thing saving me is my grades that got me a decent transfer scholarship.

But the first school I applied to wanted my high school transcript, even though I have an associate's degree, and because I'm, frankly, stupid I somehow missed that they needed it. So they threw out my application that I spent an otherwise four hours writing for.

So I'm going to Eastern, which frankly will be better for my mental health, but they don't have a tuition free program. So I'm going to have to borrow money after just finally paying off my single year at a liberal arts college debt that I took on when I was 17 (it ended up being like 30k to pay off). And it's all because I didn't fucking read right. So much for being a good student, I guess.

But it wouldn't have mattered because they would've hardly taken any of my classes despite most of them being from down the road and for an associate's degree! And even Eastern is giving me a hard time, despite my degree they say I don't have the basic level biology course - my degree is biology focused! I'm going into ecology! I have taken genetics, conservation biology, anatomy and physiology, cellular biology but I don't have intro bio? So now I have to test out, on top of working full time. Which is fine, its a good refresher...I'm just so overwhelmed with life right now. I have a stack of over 100 flash cards and I'm just anxious.

This is a year after my partner went through an ugly break up with their old fiance (we were poly), and their ex was an abusive POS who once told them if they came out as anything other than their assigned gender, he wouldn't date them anymore. He gaslit them constantly, made them feel like hell. So we finally got out, but he wanted the house they got together or 10k. He made over double what they make - and he always forced them to pay half the bills, including half of his fucking protein bullshit because it was "groceries." He knew they didn't have the funds. Because our friends are amazing, we were able to buy him off but he left the house trashed.

It fucking sucked, and they were also responsible for getting his name off the house which meant a refinance that we could hardly afford. We got lucky we were able to do it, but they hardly got anything back for it. And it was a *nightmare*. We finally got it done, after pulling teeth and it took six months. Four months longer than they said. And that entire time they were forced to occasionally reach out to him, their old abuser.

Finally we were free, but then I started having further issues at work. Between the pandemic, and working in a heavily red area during the election, I cried a lot. I work in customer service and while I make okay money for the industry, I'm constantly burned out. My colleagues are okay, but it feels stupid to leave just to find a job for three months to go back to school. Then I started being short in my drawer (I'm a teller at a bank). The final straw was being short $500. Now I'm on a work plan, and if Im short again, I'm out. And it's my fault. I don't know how it has been happening. So now I'm always on edge at work, triple checking everything. And I could leave, I could get another job but there's no promise I'll make what I do now, and in order for me to pay for the chunk of school I need to, I have to put away a certain amount every month.

I do have a grant of sorts for 5k per semester to help with bills, which will alleviate a lot once August arrives. And I know I'm crazy lucky to have that. So sometimes I feel like such an asshole about it. But we have a house to pay for and bills to pay. Just like everyone else. Ugh, I don't know.

I talked to my doctor about my weight, came in with calorie intake numbers and how much I work out with zero change. I cut out pop entirely from drinking it every day. Nothing has helped. So we switched my meds from Lexapro to Wellbutrin to see if I lose weight because of that. Nope, just having more mental break downs, steady weight, and my resting heart rate is abnormally high, stopping me from making a little extra cash donating plasma. So now I'm switching back to Lexapro with nothing gained other than. You know. Feeling like shit. Next up? Birth control coming out of my arm. Don't really need it anyway. And maybe that will help? But I don't think so. I'm not sure what to do.

I am genuinely trying to be healthy, eating more whole foods. More veggies. More home cooked meals. I love to cook, I'm just tired. And sometimes the air fryer and oven baked frozen foods are too easy to pass up. I'm trying to always eat breakfast. I'm working out again, we have a gym membership but there are so many men there and I dont always feel comfortable, because my partner has been anemic and they can't go yet. So I use our bike in the living room and do home workouts.

But when I did this last time there was zero change in weight or anything. Even when I ate really, really clean for three weeks and worked out for most days, tracking calories and everything. Nothing changed. My thyroid is fine, we've already checked it. I'm just tired.

This past year, other than being with my partner has fucking sucked. And this doesn't even cover all the shit they've dealt with with switching to they/them and a name change. I love them so much, and love that they are finally comfy but their parents were assholes about it. And that matters. It does, and I get it. I just wish I could help them more. I wish we had a break, a breather for longer than a day. Even then I can't relax, I'm too on edge. There's too much to be done. I need to earn money, I need to clean, I need to focus. I need to be productive in some way to justify if I'm not working on those things. It's...all dumb.

[sailorsol]

I've been thinking about this post a lot, and mulling over it, and growing more and more frustrated by the response to it. I work in the aerospace industry, and I have a master's degree in aviation management, which means I have spent a lot of time both studying how airlines operate and interacting with them to support their operations.

I'm going to use Delta as an example here. According to their website, they have over 800 aircraft in their fleet. In an article from March 24, they state that they have put over 600 of those into storage. That's 75% of their fleet that isn't currently flying at the moment. That is an unprecedented number. That is something that cannot be planned for by a business of any size, because this directly impacts cash flow in an unprecedented way.

I've been using and hearing that term a lot lately, "unprecedented". And while we have had global pandemics before (EG, 1918 Spanish influenza), and we have had aerospace crises (EG, post-9/11), we have never had a global pandemic during a time when so much of the world relies on aviation travel. That means that something this bad has never happened before, which means there were very few resources available to plan for such an event. There is no precedence, no prior occurrences of similar issues, for us to base our plans on.

Airlines like Delta may be worth millions of dollars in assets, but "assets" don't equal "money". Assets include airplanes, hangars, maintenance facilities, equipment, spare parts, office buildings, and all those other physical things it takes to run an airline. And all of those things cost money too, to operate or maintain. Any airline has a budget that they set forth every year, and hopefully at the end of the year they can make a profit--which means that they can pay all their bills, including operating costs, and still have money left over. Most budgets include line items for things like capital improvements--upgrading old airplanes with new features or safety requirements; buying new airplanes to replace old ones or expand their fleet; upgrading their computer systems for better customer support; etc. This is where they are now spending money on other people outside their company.

Right now? All of that profit is gone. And not only that, all of that money for things like new airplanes? Is also gone. Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, was one of the first (and only) CEOs who has publicly announced that he will forego his salary for the next six months (probably longer, if things persist). Despite that, they're still struggling to pay their bills. They are asking people to take unpaid leave, they're having to cut back on services offered on flights, institute a hiring freeze. Salaries aside, there are still other bills that need to be paid, like to the aircraft manufacturers that they buy airplanes from, or the engine manufacturers who they pay to provide technical support, etc.

And what happens when they can't pay those bills? They turn around and ask Airbus and Boeing if they can get a pass on paying their bills. Which means Airbus and Boeing are now taking a hit on how much money they have coming in. In turn, Airbus and Boeing turn around to the companies that manufacture all of the different parts, such as the Pratt & Whitney's and GE's and Rolls Royce's, and ask if they can get relief from paying their bills too. I can tell you that, for an engine manufacturer, commercial aviation is the biggest source of income. Most of the companies also provide engines for military applications, and those are fairly stable sources, but they're also limited by government spending. My company announced that no one will receive raises this year, and they're already talking about unpaid furloughs.

This entire situation sucks. Essentially, if you think of Delta as a person, they too just found out their income got cut by 50%. And it becomes a domino effect for everyone in their supply chain, which impacts all of the employees of that supply chain too. Is bailing out the aviation industry the right thing to do? I don't know. I'm not an economist. I don't know if it makes more sense to bail them out, or give every adult in the country $1200. There's probably a lot of complicated math involved in figuring out which would result in more money per person, which would allow the economy to bounce back faster and sooner. Cash in everyone's pockets may be a great short term solution, but it may not be a long term solution, whereas bailing out the industry may help stabilize things long term. And yeah, maybe we should treat it the same way the small businesses are getting treated, where it's not a bail out but a 0% loan that they're expected to pay back. Because yes, last year, Delta still made a significant profit, which means they could have put a portion of that towards one more bill, and still have money to spare.

But this idea that, just because airlines charge $50 for extra leg room (trust me, it drives me nuts too) means that they don't need extra money too? That's a load of shit. Everyone is being hit hard by this crisis. That's why it's called a crisis. What we need more of is these multi-million plus dollar CEOs not taking their salaries so that they don't have to lay off as many employees. Jeff Bezos certainly has enough money that he could go without a salary for the next decade and still be a billionaire.

We can't punish companies or industries. We can't hold them accountable for not expecting the unexpected. But there are people in those companies, in those industries, in our own government, that we should be pushing at right now, asking them to step up and say that they're willing to go unpaid, to have reduced pay, so that there's enough spare cash to support everyone else. Scoffing at and snubbing the industry isn't going to help anything, is only going to hurt more people in the long run. Finding a way to curb the bloating at the top? That's the problem we need to be focused on.

So hey, give the airlines a 0% loan, but also make it clear that there is an expectation that the executives take zero/reduced salaries until it's paid off. And maybe we can earmark that money going back to the government specifically for improving our severely outdated aviation infrastructure. That, to me, sounds like a win-win all around.