Always about to jump

-I had dinner with a guy that I originally met 10 or more years ago through Craigslist personals. He told me that my non-judgmental acceptance of his sexual kinks ten years ago have helped him tremendously since—especially since the kinks are a sort of coping mechanism for a chronic health problem/disability. I didn’t think I could have that sort of impact on people, for my words to stay with them so long.

-I realized that, of my three part-time jobs, I got them through word of mouth and applied for none of them. People sought me out as a trusted leader in times of uncertainty because they knew I could make sense of it all. (I wish this skill has made me rich but it has not.)

But also. I have found that needing help makes people feel like it is okay to give overbearing advice, and that wears me down.

After cleaning, he sat down and told me that better times are coming, etc etc, and that I needed to “manifest” a better future. Hmm. He said, “Like me, back in January, I was in a really bad state for six weeks.”

My dude. You were living here so I saw it and it barely registered to me—six weeks??? That was it? And what, you were gonna kill yourself on the seventh week?

For the sake of an analogy that might be more understandable than my niche field, let’s pretend we are an accounting department for a major baseball team. Six of the seven people have some or deep knowledge in accounting principles and the upper ones can cite tax law very well. I am the seventh and I am a novice at accounting, but I know baseball thoroughly. I am the only one that knows baseball, and having been around a while, my professional involvement with it goes back at least 15 years.

I feel like I have a lot to contribute to the department by virtue of being in the workforce a long time and knowing a lot about baseball. I am a quick learner and I feel certain I can pick up accounting techniques soon. During staff meetings, I have added context and commentary to discussions about financial management as it relates to baseball—“The off-season can be expensive because of training regimens, but there’s no revenue, so we need to budget for that.” “There was a big scandal in the industry in 2010 that affected every team’s choice of uniform suppliers, and we all had to spend triple the amount on uniforms that season.” Maybe I follow up those comments with a newspaper link to substantiate it. Everyone else is like, huh, interesting. (Some of the other staffers were in middle school in 2010 and certainly not following pro baseball news at that time.)

But fundamentally I don’t have accounting experience and I am still at the bottom of the totem pole. It’s not quite that I feel devalued or embarrassed being the learner in this situation; it’s more that the other people have zero context for understanding the value that I have to add to the department. I could be the weaver of narratives that helps them contextualize info for their decision-making, but they are kind of disinterested because they don’t know enough to care. Mostly I come across as a weird middle-aged lady butting into other people’s work conversations when I should be focusing on data entry. And I guess it potentially threatens the hierarchy of the department. But I still don’t know accounting, so I couldn’t possibly be the boss anyway. I don’t have a comfortable niche in the department—my presence is sort of uneasy.

1. Wealthy people know so many ways to avoid paying taxes. I think a wealthy kindergartener knows more about tax law than a middle-income retiree. Every week, I find myself googling something new—“tax benefits of a Donor Advised Fund” or “avoiding taxes by donating stock.”

I feel like my best bet at this point is a negotiated settlement with my ex. And it looks like I’m going to be the one to negotiate it, since my lawyer is a mess. (And that is putting it generously.) And I have no money.

I wrote to my ex on Friday and asked him to name a number. He replied and told me instead to name a number to “buy [him] out of his share of equity in the upstate house.” He clearly doesn’t want to anchor the negotiation. I don’t believe he has equity in the house but I want to give him shut-up-and-go-away money.

My current calculation is this:

A. Appraisal value of house

MINUS

B. Cost to replace crumbling concrete foundation (which is substantial $$)

MINUS

C. Remaining mortgage principal at the point we separated

MINUS

D. Amount I have put into capital improvements since we separated

MINUS

E. Half the money he got from selling our car

—————

F. Subtotal

Divided in half*

————-

E. = Final amount

——————————————————————-

What am I leaving out or forgetting here for things I need to subtract? Keep in mind he already derived substantial value from the home, relative to the rent we received from tenants.