D-Day has arrived

I knew this day would come eventually. For the last 30 years I’ve been living hand to mouth, making just enough money from my creative businesses to scrape by — desperately pivoting like a drunk ballerina to try and find any way to break through and hit on the one thing which propels me to financial security.

‘Why don’t you just get a little job to supplement your income?’ So many people have asked me this over the decades and every time I’ve felt more and more pathetic for not being able to do just that.

I always spent excruciating minutes defending myself, explaining that my many health issues prevented me from holding a normal job with regular hours because I was ill more than I was able to function — employers don’t appreciate calling in sick 4 days every week.

The busy father period

Because my health was compromised, I became a stay at home dad after my son was born and eventually I home educated him around running my business, so I needed to be flexible. Being self employed was my only option to still make any kind of living.

I made it work logistically but the long hours of being ‘on duty’ as a dad, home educator, keeping the house clean, cooking and fitting in my freelance commissions on early mornings, evenings and weekends on top of all that led to the inevitable burnout.

The first batch of burnouts

The burnouts were less fierce back then than they have been lately but still they took their toll on my mental and physical state. Periods of elevated anxiety about things which hadn’t concerned me previously, general low mood and flares in my long term chronic illnesses, all screamed at me to slow down. The need to scrape enough money together in any way I could to pay the bills shouted louder though, so I dug in and carried on regardless, running my already drained battery into oblivion.

I maintained this totally dysfunctional pattern of trying to be everything for everyone and build my business in the background for 18 years — until my son became an adult and his education finished. I remember looking forward to the day when my responsibilities would relax and I could finally put all of my effort into building the creative business I’d always dreamed of — sadly for me, that coincided with the pandemic and the total collapse of both myself and my way of earning a living.

Lost and broken

The last 5 years has been a brutal realisation of how much I’d broken myself in the preceding years. I was primed and ready at the end of 2019, with a thriving craft business and the promise of being able to get my own studio again and work full time on the thing I loved. I was exhausted from the effort of juggling everything in my life, but I could literally taste the freedom and I was driven to show everyone just what I was capable of now the weight of being a home educator and full time father were removed.

The pandemic ruined both my business and my health. The slow decline I’d been experiencing didn’t just pick up pace, I was hit by a train and knocked flat — unable to move, paralysed mentally and physically broken and bruised.

I never had the chance to realise my dreams of working full time on my craft business because I’ve been so ill for the last 5 years. Anything I tried — and I tried many times — just burned me out even further. My son now has a job and I have all the time in the world to put into building a business but I’m currently incapable both physically, mentally and financially to do what I always planned to do. It seems so cruel and unfair to have all the ideas and dreams but not be able to implement them.

There was always the pressure for me to, ’Just get a job,’ once I no longer had the responsibility to my son’s education but I never really wanted to do that. It was more than just not wanting to give up on my dreams, it was a precursor to discovering I was AuDHD and my realisation that working with and for other people was draining and made me extremely uncomfortable.

I’d chosen the self employment route through necessity, to fit around my home life and responsibilities, even before I knew I was AuDHD, but despite it’s inherent money earning limitations, it was really the only thing I could have done.

So, with regular employment out of the question due to chronic health conditions and a reluctance to put the mask back on in order to re-enter the workplace anyway, I’m still left with only one option — make a business out of something I’m good at using the very little energy I have available.

All escape routes are closed

The D-Day I spoke of at the beginning is the devastating reality that my financial struggles have finally caught up with me. I’ve had to get into a lot of debt to keep my household going as my health has declined — forever hoping that I’d hit the jackpot with some workable business plan or a lottery win to wash it all away.

I have no energy to build a new business and my credit limit has been reached. I can’t afford to pay the bills and I’m staring down the barrel of bankruptcy — losing my hard won credit rating and burning bridges I never wanted to torch in order to survive.

If I was a single man, I’d burn my old life down completely and disappear off to live in a van for a few years till the dust settled, but I have a wife and a son and responsibilities so I can’t do that. I’m 3 weeks away from having to make the decision whether to push the nuclear button and set the insolvency wheels in motion.

I desperately don’t want to. I cannot allow myself to fail. I still have the tiniest hope that I can find an eleventh hour solution. I know my old life was dysfunctional and I know it’s not fit for purpose any more — for my mental and physical health especially — but for the sake of my family, I can’t let go of my responsibilities when it would impact them both so much.

So, here I go again — one last big push to try and ignite a lucrative business idea with only 1% battery remaining and a concrete rucksack on my back. I must be crazy — I KNOW I’m crazy, but I have no other option.

This is the ‘Final Boss Level,’ and I have to dig deeper than I ever have before.

Wish me luck.

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https://ko-fi.com/andreworchard