The Day I Fell Off the World

It's sure been a hard and difficult life to be a member of so many minority groups. In fact I was born into several and seem to have managed to acquire many dozen more in my lifetime.

In fact one afternoon I said to a group of prisoners who were complaining about the treatment given to the racial minority group to which they all belonged that, "I'm sure I'm in more minority groups than the whole of you's put together". A startling announcement I'm sure, but I sure feel like it is true.

And it seems almost momentous that this article for AC will be my hundredth article.

I have found little time to write during the last couple of months or so. But I'm sure to make up for it when my annual aestivation cycle comes into being soon.

The farm still has many tasks to be done and I recently acquired a new little grandson.

Now back to that fateful morning that I felt I had (finally) managed to fall off the Earth completely.

During that last two years I have been under the strain of two major legal battles that have only recently come to the stage where they pose me no further risks.

I feel like I have just emerged and come out of a major illness or something.

I have basically been a hermit for the last two years. And these legal battles have been an extremely heavy weight upon me. They crippled me and I largely withdrew from society. I rarely went beyond my own front door(s) during this time.

During this time I also refused to take on any of my usual work as a sessional academic or prison programs facilitator.

The reasons that I felt forced into doing so are, to my mind very unfortunate. And now I am unsure if I will ever again be able to take on such work, despite the fact that I love it.

Both of my jobs are sessional and as such I get paid very sporadically. Such a situation got me into a legal battle with Social Security where I ended up being charged with a charge lesser than fraud but related to it; that of 'obtaining financial advantage'. .

This weighed very heavy on me. I dreamed of having to work for free from within the prison system.

In the final hearing the Judge basically threw the charge out and I had a criminal record for about one tenth of a second whilst she spent it in the same sentence.

I'm unsure why it is that sessional workers only get paid once every few months or so and I argued with Social Security that surely there are other people who also share this little minority group with me.

There is still a great tangle of tax documents to unravel as a result of all this being that I worked during one financial year and got paid into another one. When this and the fact that there are sizable expenses relating to the execution of my jobs is taken into account it is entirely possible that the amount of tax owed to me will be just about exactly the same amount as Social Security deemed I was fraudulently overpaid.

I pondered this fact; and in some way I'm sure it is profound.

It is highly likely that I can effectively appeal their charges and be reimbursed. This all still means mountains of paperwork yet to be done.

Meanwhile I have been trying to live on an allowance of $300.00 a month which is virtually impossible in these parts of the world where the poverty line is set around $800.00 per week.

And unless Social Security makes suitable poverty contingency arrangements for sessional workers such as myself I doubt I will be able to

afford to return to working.

So - back once again to that particular morning.

I decided that I had to somehow scratch my way back out of poverty by somehow ending my apparent retreat from people and the world and by also returning to using my psychic and naturopathic abilities and rebuilding some semblance of a viable practice.

I decided to give up on the idea that I may be able to make a living as an internet psychic or writer. The internet has only ever thrown a few pennies my way for seemingly endless hours of effort and I am indeed wondering if it is possible to make a

real living on the internet. Nonetheless I seem to have spent about the last 5 years investigating this possibility and have now decided to give up on it and go out once again to play in the 'real world'.

This epiphany coincided with getting onto Facebook where I found old friends and clients and I am now slowly returning back out to that real world and finding old and new clients. Such activity also somewhat explains my absence around here. Indeed here at AC I am in the minority of writers who are Australian and who, as such, AC will not pay any upfront fees. Add yet another minority group to my ever growing list LOL.

So if any of you need a good phone psychic or medium don't hesitate to get in touch. Or know anywhere where I might be able to market my writing ability at real pay rates let me know (12 cents a word is the amount that I worked out could replace my academic work and on which I could live comfortably).