Hi Darling Ones,

I hope you all made it into 2025 relatively unscathed. I had a quiet, peaceful start to the new year until yesterday delivered the first kick in the teeth of the year.

Social Security denied my disability claim. They seem to think the ability to clearly see letters, punctuation, lines, and shapes are not important to my work as a writer and web designer. They acknowledge it may be more difficult, but doesn’t inhibit my ability to work for significant financial gain.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahhhahahahahahahahahahahahahah.

In a fit or rage and despair, I filed an appeal explaining that the visual distortion caused by macular edema means I frequently “lose” letters and punctuation. Like, I just can’t see it because it’s swirled into the letters or spaces around it. In more ways than one, commas are my weakness.

I also explained how my Floppy Scoop makes typing super difficult and I’m more prone to typos and other errors. I legit can’t look at a screen for more than 45 minutes before my eyes refuse to focus and while I would love to only work 45 minutes a day or even 90 minutes on a good one I don’t think anyone is going to pay me $700 an hour to update their website. But if you’d like to, I’m totally willing. I also explained the walking balance stuff, but they didn’t seem to care about that as much.

Darling Ones, I’m doing my very best not to doom spiral my way into visions of homelessness where Los Gatitos and I can’t even live in Ruby (who hasn’t been started in two years) because I can’t drive.

What happens when you can’t make enough money to live on? It’s been a long time since I’ve been really poor and I don’t think you can write bad checks as easily now as you could in the 90s. I’m not charming enough with a large enough community to continually depend on the kindness of strangers to pay my mortgage.

Yuck.

It takes four to twelve weeks for Social Security to make a decision on my appeal. If that’s denied I can ask for a trial and that may take more than a year. Can you put attorney fees on a credit card? Your mortgage?

Ok, sorry, that’s a little bit of gloom and doom. I have a few months left of living expenses left thanks to a client who prepaid me for 2025 work. But still? I’m kinda scared. I feel like I’m too old to be having these kinds of financial problems.

Way to start out as a total buzzkill, 2025. You can’t knock that shit off any time.

Love,
Jodi

P.S. I’ll be okay. I would really just like one fucking thing in my god damn life to not be a difficult, annoying, frustrating hassle. Why can’t anything ever be easy?