Yesterday was a mentally and emotionally tough day and there is no other way I can really explain it. The stress of money is real and I am worried about how I will make ends meet because I am going to lose my Social Security Disability Insurance when combining Uber and a part-time security job. However, I think I can really make this happen, but only if I hustle. The good news about Uber is I can stay local and turn off the app any time that I need a rest.

Last night after work, I was fighting a mental breakdown. Today I am proud of myself for winning the fight and not succumbing to all of the thoughts swirling in my head. It helped tremendously to simply and gently rub Denisse’s back. The simple act of caring for another being helped me to relax enough to fall asleep. Last night was a combination of anger and saddness. Being poor and working is tough.

I had to work an extra two hours yesterday to cover the transportation between work and home. Since no public transportation was operating, I had to depend on my employer for the discounted Lyft rides. If I tried to do this on my own, the cost would have been prohibitive. I feel like my employer should be giving monetary recognition to those that made the effort to get to work despite the obstacles. My employer probably won’t because they see a dollar figure when they look at me; not the human being that I am.

I am fundamentally convinced that my employment as a security guard through a security company means I am the whore and they’re the pimp. The company definitely gets the better end of the deal and we are subject to abuse through threats of write-up, discipline, and termination. When we do make an effort to go above and beyond, we instead increase the expectations placed on us as individuals. The whole thing feels inescapable.

This was quite the storm and so early in winter because February is statistically the snowiest month in the area I live in. This storm hit in January. I wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come. All State of Delaware offices are closed today and non-essential employees have been told to stay home. How the state does not consider its transit system non-essential, I will never know. This leaves me in a pickle because I don’t know how I am going to make it into work for me 4pm-12am security guard shift this afternoon.

I told my boss and he offered me two options: (1) I make it to work or (2) I get written up for a no-show. I wanted to use some snark right back and ask him they invented a teleportation machine yet. I looked at Lyft and Uber prices but they’re out of sight! They’re charging between 45-50 dollars for what is tantamount to a 3 mile ride. Gotta love capitalism! There is no way I am going to Uber round trip at that cost. I would only earn 36.00 an hour before taxes. After taxes, that would be a statistically insignificant 9.00 for an 8 hour shift. Yeah, um, no.

So obviously I am going to take the write-up. At least, I have a phone interview with a hiring manager for another security company tomorrow at 9:30. It also pays 5.00 per hour more. In these days and times when employers will easily discard their employees without notice, you have to look out for yourself and your own needs. In a hyper capitalist country, no money means no food and no shelter. Be damned if I am going to end up on the streets.

The one thing I can look forward to are my state and federal tax refunds. Once I get my federal refund, I might just give the proverbial middle finger to security and Uber full time with a rented car. This will most likely be a better way to reach my ultimate goal of starting my information technology education and training business. I’d have to hustle but if I could average a gross of 1-2K per week, I just might be able to make something happen. I’d have to run some numbers.

The United States tends to be unusually cruel to the poor and middle income working class. I am not a young man anymore and I thought that my hustling days would be long behind me. Alas, I find myself in the sad position of having to hustle. It gets harder to do as we age. I am going to be 49 this year and my health is really only fair at this point. I will hustle and see how long I can do it. The secret will be really adequate sleep and hydration to recover.

My best case scenario may be to hold down a part time job 2 days a week and Uber for the other 4-5. I still have yet to run the numbers.

Last night, while watching The Conjuring: Last Rites with Denisse I got an inspiration of things that I can do to build my business. I am beginning to form a plan in my mind but it is slow going. I even started thinking about designing curriculum, etc. I will have to design some of my own curriculum because I will be going off script a little bit. My IT training and education business is going to be more than simply getting folks ready for certification exams: it’s going to make them well-rounded in the underlying technologies.

So I need to brainstorm some curriculum and labs for DNS, LAN/WAN networking, setting up web servers with NGINX and Apache, plus more. The idea is to have everyone really ready to enter the workforce, not simply getting them specialty knowledge of a vendor’s product that could become obsolete or even discontinued quickly. Technology is so rapidly advancing that it is almost obsolete by the time that it comes to market.

I am also thinking about teaching some state of the art, not yet generally used technologies to showcase the possibilities of what can be done. I want to attract the kind of student that is not just seeing dollar signs in front of their eyes, but wants a solid foundation in not just how corporate networks work but how the internet itself works. Hence it makes sense to teach protocols.

I usually detest ChatGPT and other AI platforms but they can have a real use for things like outlining and brainstorming when writer’s block hits. Writer’s block usually hits me before I even get started, LOL. So I am slowly learning to see the value of AI in helping get past writer’s block. That much said, I will never trust it for accuracy; simply ideas only. Today’s mission is to start thinking and actively planning curriculum and courses.

I finally got the courage to form my own small business in Delaware called Avvira Global LLC. For now it will just be for some generic business activity like driving for Uber and providing “consulting and professional services.” This was a huge step for me because I was a scared and filled with trepidation from past mistakes. But I had to take the first step and the first step is done. I will be my own single-member LLC and I am going to make a go at it.

Once I have enough in savings, I would like to morph my activities into information technology training and education. But this requires a lot more steps as it is considered a regulated business and I would need to gain approval through the Delaware Department of Education among other Delaware government entities. I know I have a road ahead but it is somewhat exciting.

With all of the ability I have in IT, I think the next logical step for me is to become my own training school. I would love to teach future generations how to be competent network and systems engineers. I want to offer labs that show how the actual internet and TCP/IP networks operate. What if I can better prepare students for the rapidly increasing digital world? What if I can give my students a well-rounded foundation to get them started professionally such that they know more than theory. They can get their hands down and dirty into complex problems.

I know I am going to have to develop a semi-customized curriculum in addition to the approved training materials that a vendor may provide. This will probably be somewhat challenging. I’ll have to engage a LMS like Moodle. I know I will probably need an ERP System like ERPNext. So much to do and so much to brainstorm. But I feel like something exciting might come out of this. I am hopeful but taking it very slow and measured.

I feel inexplicably sad today and like a clock inside of me is winding down. I have the sound in my head of the Felix-shaped clock’s meow. The sound triggers tears in my eyes and reminds me that I have maybe two and a half decades left where I will be, at best, lucid. There’s no way of knowing what it will be but I don’t understand why I feel so sad right now.

I don’t know what I am going to do because right now I feel like I am living in survival mode. I feel like I’m just fighting to live; that everyday is a struggle. I just arrived to work and I feel like I could break down in tears at any minute. Last night, for the first time in my life, I had a sleep walking incident. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I saw that I was sleeping in my underwear, tee shirt, and a hoodie. I knew I went to bed wearing sweats and socks. This has really set the tone for today. I am wondering what is happening next. Am I losing my marbles?

Where I work is thoroughly demoralizing and the pay, at 2.00 an hour above minimum wage, does nothing to relieve it. It seems all I ever do is worry about money. This week was an epic suck fest. Denisse and I even had a few squabbles. I hate squabbles but I know that is part of love and marriage. I tell myself that I will never go to bed angry with Denisse. Today is a given, tomorrow an unknown.

I am sad because I see my dream of teaching information technology to adults and teenagers slipping away from me. It’s making me cry. I’ve got to get this under control because I work as a security guard inside a police station. It just would not be a good look for a 6’4″ male security guard to break down in tears. If I can just last these 8 hours. I could sit on the porch at home and cry until I feel better. Despite the cold, I may just do that.

Well, maybe I am going to reach out next week to my DVR counselor and tell her that things have changed dramatically in my life and that I will no longer be able to attend the University of Delaware due to affordability and medical reasons. I suppose I should be sad but I am relieved on one level because school is stress and there are other avenues for learning. I am going to have to resume my class on Financial Literacy on Khan Academy but take it in small bites I suppose. The complex terms are tough.

I am so grateful to the better night’s sleep that I had last night! It’s amazing how sleep improves the mood. I have an errand to run this morning that I really do not want to do but have no choice. It seems that I’ve been unable to reach the staff at my psychiatrist’s office. I leave messages and I never get any return phone calls. Thus, it has come to the point where I will need to go to the office to actually make an appointment. Is staffing really that bad!?

Today I will also try to make more headway on my financial literacy class. I was working on it yesterday at the library, when out of the blue, I had a panic attack. I started the unit called “Money Personality,” and as I was reading, the panic attack came on very strong. I know I worry about money constantly so this might have triggered it? I don’t really know but it was very unpleasant; felt like a heart attack except I knew it wasn’t. Thankfully, I have a good friend who I could text and it calmed me down.

From a fresh mind and perspective, I will now sit down to work more on this section of the Khan Academy class. I think this time around it should be mentally easier (or at least so I am hoping.) I wish money matters weren’t so stressful. Yet I know that the cause of the stress is my not understanding of personal finance which is the purpose of the class I am taking in the first place.

Well, I am going to brave the cold today and make the trek to my doctor’s office so that I can get this very important made. I’ll also have to get my INR levels checked because I take Warfarin to prevent blood clots. Once that gets done, I’ll go to the library.

There’s no other way to state this than last night sucking the big one royally. If I managed an hour of a sleep, that would be an overestimation. This is definitely going to have an effect on me today. I don’t know how much I will manage to accomplish today but I’ll do the best I can to continue to make progress on my personal finance class because it is just that important. While at work yesterday afternoon, I realized just how much I want to be my own entrepreneur. I guess it is good to say that I have a goal in mind.

I guess part of my problem is that my sex drive is returning full force after losing some more weight. I think I am somewhere in the 240s, a weight I haven’t seen since around 2004-ish. I have more energy and libido; walking is easier and I can go up and down stairs without the need for an elevator. This is all good stuff but the sexual frustration is annoying. Seeing all of the sex scenes in movies and TV is kicking the drive into overdrive. Anyhow, I digress. This isn’t what I’ve planned to write.

Today I have to do some learning for certain and calm myself down with its simple joy. Hell or even do some planning. I know I need to reach out to Wendy Klaiser about work and changes and I have not done that yet either. I am a bit of a mess this morning. Oh well … what can I do except muddle on through. This will be short. I feel weird.

I did not expect to get a call from my employer telling me that there was a shift I could pick up. I asked Denisse (finacee) how she would feel about it just in case she had a plan in mind. Denisse is understandably very sensitive to change so I wanted to clear this with her first. It’s easy extra money and the shift is from 10a-6p so I figured I might as well get in the hours when they’re there.

Since work is slow, I managed to file my taxes for 2025 and I am getting an okay refund at 878 dollars. It’s not quite as good as last year’s, but in this administration, I won’t argue. Getting this money back will help a lot. I hope that it processes and deposited quickly.

I am feeling a lot better today after putting in some time on the personal finance class on the Khan Academy. I’ve got the beginnings of a budget and I really like the 50/30/20 rule that Sal Khan explained and introduced in his videos. It was rather enlightening to see where my money is going. For me, this process was more effective than a cashflow worksheet which my estranged father constantly harps on. Khan’s system is simpler. I’ll continue to work through the course bit by bit.

I feel pretty darn good and I don’t completely know why because my professional life isn’t very healthy but I am slowly working on that. I have hope some good will start to come with the budgeting efforts.

This morning I woke up early and decided it is a good time to resume working on my personal finance course through the Khan Academy. But just prior to resuming, first a little journaling. I slept okay last night. Now that I am down some 30 odd pounds from middle of last year, I am finding myself needing less in the way of sleeping medications. It turns out that the combination of 200mg of Trazodone and 10mg of Ambien is just too much. I found better results from Ambien and Melatonin.

I am worried about my professional life right life right now because I don’t really know what I would like to do to earn money. I am working as a security guard and I know that is what I unequivocally do not want to do. It’s gotten to the point where I cannot really stand doing it more than 2-3 days a week. It’s a job so easy and boring that it actually induces depression because I cannot use my brain. You would think they’d want a smart guard but I’ve found that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. I find more success in simply being an automaton.

One thing that this personal finance class should provide is a clearer picture of future possibilities to improve my life. In a capitalist society, it’s virtually impossible to improve your life if you do not have the money to do so. So this is a journey. I know I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a business geared towards information technology training and education. There is competition out there, including from the state-run community college Delaware Technical Community College. But those courses are purely called, in the parlance, Work Force Development. They’re geared towards vendor certifications.

Vendor certifications are all well and good so long as the hardware/software product still stays en vogue. Given that the obsolescence time frame is short, what good is it if you spend all of your time and money (time should be considered money) to learn something so narrow in scope? Wouldn’t you be better served to come out with a strong understanding of the actual concepts of what compromise networks and not just learning enough to satisfy the vendor?

It means that my courses will most likely not be the cheapest ones out there but they will leave the student highly prepared to enter the workforce. My plan is to offer a course in which I add material and labs to the required curriculum for vendor-based certifications. This will allow the person responsible for administering the technology to be better at troubleshooting and be better at being able to communicate with engineers at the vendor to solve problems. This is how I differentiate myself from the IT boot camps and strict vendor certifications.

Personal finances being in order marks the beginning of planning this business. I love learning and it is my hope that I could find a group of like-minded students who have a passion for a deep dive into technology. I’d like students that want to be able to run rings around their peers that have taken courses at other schools.

When the idea popped into my head, it was born around some self-exploration about why I love computers and networks. I love to tinker and I wondered what would allow me to tinker outside of the box and get paid for it. It turns out experimentation and labs are the perfect part of education and maybe I could earn a dollar or two in the process. IT is only fun for me when I can play. Where else can I play then in an educational environment? Start an IT school and I can get paid to play.

Back when I was in high school, I had this really awesome writing teacher named Edie. I went to a friends school so we actually called our teachers by their given name. Anyhow, some of the best advice she ever gave us was to journal before embarking on tasks requiring heavy thought or concentration. So that’s what this is. I’ve lost contact with her as the years went by so I hope she is doing well.

So the activity for today is to continue the class on personal finance with Khan Academy. At the same time, I need to start looking at where all my money is going. This means looking at what all of expenses are. This is going to be a Sherlock Holmes style investigation because I don’t even know what I am spending my money on. But fortunately I am laughing about it and not blaming myself. That is, as they say, a start.

I am having the early stages of an epiphany so I don’t know where this journal is going to go. I realized finally just how stressful, demoralizing, and anger-producing living paycheck to paycheck is. Part of me realized this as I was beginning the class. Then I realized just how much of this was truly affecting me. I’ve been hating life, blaming myself for life’s choices, and finding myself wanting to retreat into substances for happiness.

I am realizing just how many parts of life are so interconnected and that few things exist in a silo. Getting my personal finances in order is dropping a stone into a pond. That’s my epiphany. Getting my personal finances in order is the next step on the mental health journey and one I’ve been avoiding. This tacit avoidance, I believe, is creating a traffic jam on the road to mental health recovery. I never completely get past a certain point, end up lost, and then back at the beginning.

Early this year I wrote about wanting to start and run a business. Somehow I convinced myself I could do it when not even my personal affairs are in order. Since I don’t have the “rich uncle” to instantly cut me a check (or multiple checks) for money to run a business, I must fund it myself. In order to fund it myself, I cannot live paycheck to paycheck and expect to get started.

When taking an initial look at things, I realized just how much money I was spending on streaming services, GrubHub food delivery, and Uber and Lyft. My jaw hit the floor. I’ve become a revenue stream for the gig economy. I also was spending money on electronic gadgets and services all in the hopes of making me feel better when they don’t provide lasting enjoyment. Instead, these expenses are providing a very temporary respite (and distraction) from the difficulties of life.

While tightening the spending belt is not an initially pleasant thing to have to consider, I’m now learning that there is a mindset to it. I wrongfully looked at this as depriving myself from these extravagances. Instead, this is not a matter of a deprivation but a matter of personal pride because I am gaining control of my life. I don’t own a car so it means waiting in the cold and wind at the bus stop. While doing that yesterday instead of taking the warm, cozy ridesharing service, I looked at it with a bit of personal pride, because instead of taking the easy and expensive way out, I felt like a responsible adult.

There will be more to come on this topic as my own thoughts continue to develop into descriptive language. But for now, the task at hand awaits.