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Even once I get on ODSP (knock on wood) I'm still only going to be able to earn $200 a month on top of the $1169 they'll hopefully give me (plus the $100 bonus for having worked, which for some reason doesn't apply for OW?).
What's great about this is that my rent is $1260.38!
What's great about this is that my rent is $1260.38!
That leaves me with 208 entire dollars every month to spend on aaaaaanything I want!!!
Except whoops, ahaha, my meds are $95 a month 
boy, I love to be an independent adult human person capable of supporting herself!!! man, do I enjoy how well social assistance has kept pace with the cost of living!!!
Just throwing this out there so we all grasp how this works. I have family and I'll be *okay* no matter what, but that is the ONLY THING PROTECTING ME, because the "safety net" we're all supposed to have sure as hell doesn't.
ODSP is woefully inadequate on a systemic level. It doesn't actually furnish disabled people with the resources they need to live, which is pretty gross when you consider that WE ALL PAY INTO THIS SYSTEM under the assumption it's doing something necessary for vulnerable people.
I put work above everything else right up until I hit my breaking point. When I left university because the stress was too much, I kept both of my two jobs. I worked at the newspaper until my term was up (because there was a couch I could sleep on between pages).
As my health got worse and worse and worse, I backed out of volunteering and activism commitments, I stopped seeking out performance opportunities, I saw my friends less--I started saying no to everything except work. My stupid receptionist/data admin job was all I had left.
They gingerly, reluctantly "accomodated" me by tolerating my many absences and not making a fuss about me sleeping in the first aid room during my lunches, letting me wear sunglasses at my desk. I had four huge bottles of Advil and Tylenol, a big thing of menthol gel, a heat pad.
I did everything I could to hang onto that stupid job because it was all I had--and then when the FND symptoms started, and suddenly I couldn't even hold my eyes still enough to do incredibly mindless data entry, it got a billion times harder.
It was so embarrassing to me to be only working two days a week in the first place and STILL have that be too much. It was the easiest, blandest, most I-could-train-a-lemur-to-do-this job I've ever had, and I still couldn't reliably handle it. To this day that really fucks me up.
In the end I didn't even have to quit--my suspicions about how pointless my job was turned out to be correct, and they laid off my entire department.
I couldn't land another normal job after that, even though I tried. How could I? How do you sit in a job interview and act like you're hot shit that any organization would be lucky to have, when a bad night's sleep or a slightly stressful situation renders you completely useless?
I subsisted on freelancing for awhile, but man, does it have a steep learning curve. As an independent contractor you're only as good as what you can deliver--and, well, when you have unpredictable energy levels, episodic chronic pain and a mysterious nerve problem, it's tough.
This is all to say that MAN, WE DO NOT ALL HAVE THE SAME TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, and that no amount of "hustle" () is gonna change the fact that chronically ill people HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS THAN HEALTHY PEOPLE.
) is gonna change the fact that chronically ill people HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS THAN HEALTHY PEOPLE.
I'm lucky because I have access to the tools I need to freelance (like a laptop that works, and reliable internet), and because I happen to kick ass at copy editing.
I'm also surrounded by people who have gone out of their way to support me when I really needed it.
I'm also surrounded by people who have gone out of their way to support me when I really needed it.
I'm an incredibly fortunate person in the grand scheme of things, and I try to never, ever lose sight of that. I know that in the long run, I personally will figure out a way to live. But what about every other goddamn person before me, and every one that comes after?
You shouldn't have to be lucky to be able to survive. You shouldn't have to destroy your body and your fragile quality of life to be able to endear yourself to an employer, or a partner, or a parent. The social safety net is supposed to be there for you. It's not.
Everything I have now is DESPITE the system that's supposedly in place to help people like me, not because of it. #ODSP is a joke, and it shouldn't be. We deserve a safety net that actually supports us.
