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Thursday, August 16, 2012

One in One Billion Two Hundred Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand

Those are the odds of winning the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes.  Probably equivalent to getting struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark as a coconut falls on your head or something like that.

I enter said sweepstakes whenever a popup appears or they send me an email.  I do it not because I expect to win --I expect to lose every time they have a drawing be it "Special Early Look" or, "We've strung this one out long enough, somebody has to win this time."-- no, I do it mostly because of all the things that could possibly solve my problems, one in 1.2155 billion odds honestly seems like the best odds I'm likely to get.

Well, I'd get better odds from buying a lottery ticket, but for that I'd need money.  Entering the PCH sweepstakes only wastes my time.

I have a list of things to do, some of which might earn me some marginal income, others of which might slightly improve my life.  I've had more or less the same list all summer, and the winter before that, and so on backward.  Every day seems to bring a lack of progress.  Same stuff left to do, less time to do it in.

As I mentioned somewhere or other, I've cashed out basically all of my savings to pay living expenses, I'm not sure when that runs out, it may already have done so in which case I'm living on leniency that will not last forever.  Things will fall apart, I just don't know when.

I'm getting psychiatric help, which has yet to do much helping but these things can take time, which is contingent on me being a student.  So come September I need to be back at school.  That doesn't bother me, without school I'd hardly ever leave the house.  Even if my performance these last few years has sucked, I've at least had a nearly perfect attendance record, and that's an accomplishment of a sort.  Paying for school, that bothers me.

I'll probably have to borrow money; I'm already living on borrowed money.

Which means my problems will just get deeper.

My family is variously a source of hindrance, annoyance, and rage, with only a few bright spots shining through.

Any plan I do have is quickly derailed.

And, basically, since the lead up to my birthday, I haven't been able to get my brain in gear.  Remember how I said I was going to try to write three short stories involving ghosts?  Notice how those don't exist?

The lack of progress on those kind of resembles the lack of progress on everything else.

Which makes the one in more than a billion odds seem like the best odds I'm likely to get.  Since everything else seems to work all of once in never.

3 comments:

  1. Some days it seems everything I touch turns to shit.

    Some days are better.

    This is not intrinsically a transactional universe; you don't automatically have to do stuff for other people in order for them to do stuff for you. Sometimes you have it tough and they help you; sometimes they do and you help them; overall, over ALL people, it adds up.

    Or something.

    Virtual hugs.

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  2. "I do it mostly because of all the things that could possibly solve my problems, one in 1.2155 billion odds honestly seems like the best odds I'm likely to get."

    Oh I so much know that feeling. I went through a phase of buying lottery tickets because I really couldn't see any other way I was going to get out from under. Right now, I'm just getting by from day to day and trying not to think of my odds, which I'm not sure is an improvement.

    What infuriates me most is people who take a statement like that and, instead of seeing it as an absence of realistic avenues, decide that a lecture on the extreme unlikeliness of winning these things is in order. Because somehow they're missing that odds don't have to actually be good to be the best on offer. Meh.

    Hope things start looking up for you soon.

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  3. I also hope things start looking up for you soon.

    ReplyDelete