Sallie Mae Can Suck My Balls Clean

Life lately:

Enjoying the hell out of working with wife. She is contracting with my company, and making such a good impression that the president the other day was like "Get ____ to help you with that project" to one of the sales head dudes. We eat lunch together every day. We're kindof sickeningly in love :)

Working on weekly goals, some we reach. Others not. This week, to only eat out twice, both times because of work reasons.

Met with a lawyer and found out we are in too much debt for chapter 13, and make too much money for chapter 7. (last year, I would have qualified for a chapter 7, but couldn't find the $1600 that it would have taken to file it since I had no job, so go figure). We literally can't declare bankruptcy even though we have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans between us and will NEVER be able to work it all off. Our loan debts take all my paychecks per month leaving not quite enough for rent. So we rely on wife to make money for us to live on. There's something rather freeing about the fact we cannot discharge student loans (because Sallie Mae in 2005 lobbied congress to pass a law making that impossible), yet they are so large due to predatory lending that we cannot possibly keep up the payments. Something freeing about looking at indentured servitude for the rest of our natural lives. In fact, it's weird because even indentured servants got off after 7 years. Fannie Mae has us for life without parole, and it's all perfectly legal for them to do so.

It's easy to denigrate us for taking on so much debt. But we aren't alone. Student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year. There's no question it's the next bubble, higher ed. As more and more of us, fed the lie that higher education is the key to a better life, take on debt, then find no jobs for us on the other side, we are not going to be able to pay back the promise/lie you fed us, America. But hey, don't take my word for it. Other bloggers have said it far better than me.

We keep on truckin on. Sallie Mae suicide is certainly something we discuss on an intellectual level, since being in this position sucks so much balls, and no one gives a shit because you took out the loans willingly to chase the dream that we are fed about education being worth the cost. But in the end, I keep saying, we don't have a house, we don't have cars worth more than 300 bucks. we really have nothing to our names, so what the hell would they take? They can garnish wages, sure, but would any sane judge garnish so much that I can't afford rent let alone food or gas to get to work to pay the wages they garnish? It's hard to say, since this insane system has been upheld by judges so far.

Maybe once enough people are out of work and in life-debt to Sallie Mae - and given the exponential costs of higher ed, that won't take long - things might start to change. Until then, will keep going to work, keep paying the interest only payments that are more than i made in a month at my first professional job 10 years ago.

Sigh.

Bipolar Life in 2012

In typical fashion I’m a day late on reflection. Seems that all the year of 2012 blogs are already out and done.

I was at a show the other night, the Vilification Tennis group doing their F**K 2012 show. They are a wildly inappropriate insult comic group and always a blast to go see. You will think “Oh, you didn’t” at least once during the show, often while laughing. Here’s a video of them at the renaissance fest.

 I cannot repeat the Red Hook jokes, but they did help me personally to find some way through that shit that has been weighing on me for the past month.

Well, during the show, one of the activities was to ask the audience who had the shittiest year. They asked people to raise their hands to share. I thought over the past year.

I started off the year 4 months into unemployment that would last another 2 then got some sort of contract-work-employed for a couple months. I would have declared bankruptcy if I’d had the $1,500 for a lawyer. I was 3 months into pre-foreclosure on the house. I told my mother I'd had thoughts of suicide in two emails, and she never responded. I broke off contact with my family. I’ve hit my heaviest weight ever in the last week. Wife is now living in the uncertain contract position life where we never know when she will be paid and how long she has a job. Wife’s years of school loans are coming due at a rate of $900 a month to begin with. We enter 2013 with no savings, no safety net, and capped off the holidays by walking out on Christmas weekend with wife’s family after her grandmother said one too many criticisms of wife (a long list 33 years deep that includes how she was too big to ever get a husband, too dumb, useless and now added too loud, so thanks for that new complex). Also had a fun fight with her family members who were complaining about homeless people begging for money, when we were literally weeks from being among them when I finally landed my job.

Yet. I didn’t raise my hand.

And not because I was scared to speak in public. I don’t have that fear.

I didn’t raise my hand out of some sort of “could be worse” thing.

For every piece of crap part of my life over the past year, I also thought about the things that went right.

We sold the house before it was foreclosed, without owing money. I got hired by an awesome company and doing what I love – writing and creating. I am doing better without my family, and now know they can’t manipulate me through money, even when times are at their worst, and no longer accept money from them. I do pretty well feeling like shit about life on my own without their help, and Wife’s work is uncertain, but it’s a fuck of a lot better than working for Lisa Larson et al. at Hennepin Technical College. She gets paid closer to what she is worth, is respected for what she can do, and has gotten to know my colleagues better than me since she’s more of a people person than me. We get to go to work together every day and eat lunch together. We got on a debt reduction program. We quit smoking in August and it has stuck. Once I got my job, we have been able to start fully participating in life in the Twin Cities by having fantastic dinner experiences at The Melting Pot, the Lexington, Mort’s Deli, and more. We spent our anniversary in the St. Paul Hotel, where we got upgraded to the poshest room where presidents, dignitaries and celebrities stay. We’ve gone to Twins games, Paul F. Tompkins, Wits, Sleepwalk with Me with both Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia at the screening, the It’s A Wonderful Life Radio Play, a Roast of Ebenezer Scrooge, the ballet, Art a Whirl, the Walker Art Museum, Northern Spark, the Aquatennial fireworks, Prairie Home Companion, Canterbury Downs horse races. Instead of not being able to go to things because we’re broke as shit, we can’t go cause we simply can’t find the time cause there’s too much we want to do. We’ve had trips to the North Shore, Duluth, and Red Wing. Wife’s best friend made it home safely from Afghanistan. Wife overcame fear of heights to go with me up Lutsen mountain in a gondola. For one month, we were both happily employed full time (more than we’ve ever been). We’ve been relatively healthy this year. I’m off all medications. Our cars have miraculously made it through another year.

2012 continued our bipolar life, which would have been a good alternate name for this blog. Highs, Lows, and few inbetweens.

BTW, the guy who won the shittiest year award: Got the Harley he’d saved up for years for, six months later, got hit by a drunk driver and spent three months in the hospital. Yeah, that would suck ass.