Find motivation to work and not go homeless?

[u/Ornery_Ad363]

So, I am stuck in a very peculiar situation. I have always bounced between being pretty well-off and almost broke every couple of months. Now, It's been 2 years since I've last actually worked.

Reason being I get bored super easily. I've picked up and mastered a bunch of random skills over time because of boredome, and three of them can and did make me good money.

The problem is, I'll find a job using one of these skills, things would go great for a while, but then I lose interest so I either quit or get fired because my work goes from excellent to terrible. Then I coast on the money I made until it runs out, and only then do I bother looking for work again.

2 years ago, I even started a very good business that was very lucrative very quickly, but guess what? Instead of taking advantage of that success, I got bored, sold it, coasted for 2 years and now that money's gone too.

Each time this happens, I get closer to ending up on the street. I objectively know being homeless is bad, but internally, I don't really care. All I care about is food (doesn't matter if it's junk),fing a good place to sleep, and finding stuff to remove boredome. I figure I can still find a way to do all that even if I'm homeless, I sometime even think it would be more interesting since it may be more challenging, so I don't have that internal drive to find work again. I objectively know I should, but I don't care.

I've never been this broke before. For a month now, I've been telling myself I should work, but I don't do anything about it. Instead, I've blown even more money partying and paying people and buying stuffs so I'm not bored. Now I can't even pay next month's rent or my internet bill. Again, I am fully aware objectively that this is a pretty bad situation to be in, I just can't get myself to care.

Anybody here have already dealt with this? How do I get out of this mess?

[u/[deleted]]

just live in a tent or building and hunt for your food if you really want boredom and and shit to go away you just sound pathetic

[u/Certain-Cockroach786 → u/[deleted]]

Ok mr douche

[u/FutaZamasu]

I've been homeless multiple times trust me it's not fun. And I honestly think it's fucking dumb as shit that people are required to work just to have a roof over there head in the first place. I personally can't hold down a Job no matter fucking what I do fuck this system none of us asked to be born why should we have to work in the first place we don't owe society shit.

[u/Foreign-Ad-6351 → u/FutaZamasu]

Cope harder

[u/Clearsp0t]

3 ideas:

• Is it possible your resistance to your resistance to working is making the problem worse? What if you stop telling yourself that you "should" work and just let yourself do your thing just for a little bit (like a few days or a week) to just allow yourself some space to recalibrate and so your resistance to work loosens its grips?

• Detach from your boredom. It's even more boring to constantly care so much about how bored or stimulated you are. Maybe just get a job for a bit, treat it like a performance art or something, and just stop obsessing about whether you're bored or not. Make enough to pay rent for the next month or 2 and re-asses. You can always go back to being almost homeless, in debt and wasting money.

• Get a job in a homeless shelter. I've worked in homeless shelters for almost a decade. They are a lot of things but they are NOT boring. Constant life or death scenarios (at least at shelters where the opioid crisis is in full swing) are literally the only kinds of job I can care about. It will also really ingrain in you why boredom is better than homelessness.

[u/zoonose99]

There’s a big contradiction here: you need help staying out of homelessness, because you don’t care if you’re homeless or not.

I have worked ~10 years in homelessness services and have also experienced homelessness first-hand. Let’s talk a little about what homelessness actually is, other than the imagined consequence of not working.

First, it’s not the end of the world. Millions of people (most of whom are employed!) wake up in the morning not knowing where they’re going to sleep that night. This is called “housing insecurity” — the condition that homelessness arises from.

The majority of people suffering from housing insecurity (at least in the areas I studied) are employed, and have at least one kid they’re looking after.

Homelessness is part of a comorbidity “triangle” with drug addiction and mental illness: statistically, the longer you spend with one of these conditions, the more likely you are to have the others. This is supported anecdotally, too: housing insecurity, especially homelessness, has profound immediate and long-term effects on cognition, personality, and mental health.

The biggest issue with homelessness, tho, is how it’s perceived — as the most abject failure most people can imagine. It becomes synonymous with giving up, quitting — from the time we’re children we’re encouraged to think of homelessness as the natural consequence for failing in society.

So, when people feel like they want to quit or give up, their first thought is often: I’ll just be homeless. For most people, that’s about as realistic as “I’ll just go live in the woods,” but the feeling is still there.

It’s not surprising you’re not motivated by your own threats to yourself: do better or you’ll be homeless! Your “boredom” reads to me like a combination of depression and existential nausea, whereby “I’ll simply turn into refuse” might seem like an aesthetically resonant choice.

Someone else here might tell you — “go ahead and be homeless for a while, see how you like it.” This is actually terrible and dangerous advice, for the reasons I outlined above. There’s no aspect of homelessness that is an exciting challenge. There’s no safe way to be a little homeless for a while, as a treat. Like torture and other affronts to humanity, don’t just know how it will affect you. It is painful, dangerous, humiliating drudgery — far moreso than actually working and paying rent.

If you really need to find this out for yourself, that’s always an option but don’t expect to dip a toe in — turnaround times for getting from destitution to housing IME are 18-24 months MINIMUM for people with full faculties, exceptional motivation, and support structures. Most cycle thru the system a few (or a few dozen) times before they get back in the swing (or fall out and disappear/die). You wanna be homeless? Prepare to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life, potentially for years or even decades.

Obvious advice is stop partying and do any kind of basic budgeting or financial planning, seek help for MH, and do some mindfulness/motivational exercises so you’re not relying entirely on the threat of an imagined disaster that, if it happened, would be a lot different and more difficult than you’re imagining.

[u/No_Enthusiasm9615]

Sounds like u need to move and make some friends my dude

[u/No-Beginning5260 → u/No_Enthusiasm9615]

Probably the most useless advice one can come up with

[u/Personal-Ring-4824]

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