Bankruptcy and Inappropriate Guilt

All guilt is inappropriate. The definition of guilt according to Dr. David Burns in his cure for depression book ‘Feeling Good’, is feeling responsible for something you are not responsible for. Therefore I have had a love hate relationship with having declared bankruptcy twice, and due to a medical emergency that put me into long term care, for a long time, recently I walked away from most of my debt.

In 1992 I was a career taxi dispatcher and I had decided to upgrade my education for interest sake primarily but also to increase my wage earning power by joining the middle class through education.

After 6 years of full time university I qualified as a professional artist with a teaching certificate and 60 grand in debt, $500.00 a month in payments for years and years and years, a government sponsored slave to the bank, one of the richest oligarchs on the planet.

Artists, with no trust fund or rich family who have a debt to service, need a second job and I chose teaching, I love it and I’m good at it. Here is the thing, in Alberta and the US. it’s mostly contract work. You are paid $125 an hour with no benefits and no hours. You teach 1 class a week per semester. So you need a second job for your second job. Artists have whats known as blended careers. So I went back to logistics and subsistence wages and long hours, another slavery. No energy or time left over for art and teaching. No benefits. So I declared my second bankruptcy and wiped out the student loans because I now needed that 500 a month for food.

Eventually I had a stroke. The first bankruptcy was due to small business debt, after art school I was being financed by my local picture framing supplier that was acquired by a large American firm who promptly called the low interest loan. The idea being that you re-financed through them at a higher interest rate moving from 5% to 34%, shut down your low cost home based business model (not allowed as unfair competition) and move into a high rent storefront quadrupling your costs and increasing your prices eight-fold for a smaller margin due to fewer customers willing to pay a 8 times increase. This is indentured servitude to the home office in Alabama. Corporate slavery.

Ya no. So I went to KPMG accountants for a consultation and 20 min later I was bankrupt and free of debt.

My backup job now became my main job, driving courier as a contractor where they give you high priced rush’s occasionally but mostly low cost (cast) regular delivery’s so you were essentially on subsistence wages with no benefits such as dental. (Most contractors just have their teeth removed.) The upper cast drivers doing all rush delivery’s were the dispatcher’s personal friends/sycophants. So I was driving 60 hours a week stimulating constant high cortisone from spending my life in high alert in traffic until I stroked out.

The immigrants have all these jobs now as this is an improvement over 3^rd world conditions. This is the better life they came for.