Taking Shots and Dealing with Bureaucracy

Taking shots and dealing with Bureaucracy

A whole lot of us have been taking shots lately and not the good kind (Tequila, Whiskey, Kamikaze, or whatever).  I’m talking about the shots to the gut and the psyche.  I try not to listen to more than an hour of the “news” filled with cheerful information about the latest infection and death rates from this horrible virus because just listening amounts to a couple of gut shots. Then when you try to do the things you’re so used to doing there’s either a closure, a long line, or a no-can-do. 

I know, it’s mainly just a whole lot of inconvenience, but for many spoiled citizens of the good old USA, myself included, eventually enough negativity shots start to add up to some serious pain (just like with the alcoholic kind).  It’s sort of like the boxer taking a lot of body blows resulting in a loss of power in the last rounds.  The the gloves drop lower and lower instinctively to protect the mid-section leaving the fighter open to knock out blows to the head.  I’m trying to bob and weave as best as possible to avoid taking either the body blows or head shots, but it’s starting to take a toll.  Luckily, there’s the good kind of shots.

Again, I realize there are people getting really ill and dying every single day (over 130,000 dead in the USA as of early July), so I really got nothing to complain about.  However…  The company I work for supplies professional lighting, audio and video equipment to venues for large gatherings of people and guess what’s NOT coming back anytime soon.  After concerts, conventions, plays and TV shows started canceling, we were all furloughed.  Furlough to me used to mean the kind of time off that sailors longed for when they pulled into a port.  You know partying, drinking and other forms of tension relief.  This ain’t that!  So, I had to file for the second time in my almost 50 years of employment for UNEMPLOYMENT compensation. The first unemployment lasted a few weeks and this time it’s been over three months.  I’ve paid a lot of money into this system over the years both as an employer and through my many employers.  Anyway, I applied initially on March 20^th and four weeks later got a letter from the Employment Development Department with a request for an “AFFIDAVIT OF WAGES which I sent in pronto.   Another four weeks passed before I was notified that they need identity verification in addition to the 6 months of pay stubs and 2019 W-2 form I already sent.  Now they need copies of my birth certificate, a bill or bank statement with my name and address, as well as the first three pages of my social security statement.  I get they had a sketchy record of doing their jobs when there was only several thousand people to deal with not millions.  I know they have been overwhelmed by the dramatic and sudden increase in the ranks of the unemployed.  However, I found out a month into the pandemic, some hackers stole over $100,000,000 in unemployment benefits.  Apparently they found the system worked easily and quickly for their use.  I wonder if they were asked for multiple verifications?  Now it’s been three and a half months of no income and zero relief of any kind with no real hope that I will get anything in the coming month.

In the interest of full disclosure, my lovely wife has been fully employed throughout this time and is involved with a health care company doing clinical trials and working non-stop to help people already sickened by the virus.  Her company has found various new treatments and is also working to find vaccines.  So while we’re struggling, we’re not suffering like so many.  Still, we all feel the pressure of uncertainty and negativity leading to anxiety and some degree of depression.  This makes the little everyday issues we are used to dealing with loom larger and the bigger issues become almost unmanageable.  Even though I haven’t been sitting around wringing my hands and worrying, I have been affected. To help deal, I’ve done lots of home improvements, have been studying to learn new skills, exercising and making fabulous, healthy meals for myself and my wife.  Of course, there are also the aforementioned shots.

Hope is a tricky thing, but I still have plenty.  It gets renewed when I see friends and family and ebbs when I hear there’s even more sickness and death on the horizon.  Balancing the positive and negative can be challenging, but we simply have no choice.  Just trying our best to stay healthy physically and mentally is what we all have to do.