The facts:
- I was going to do this program, that if I got accepted, meant I’d earn X amount per week via the same people who dole out the unemployment in BC – while I was in a classroom setting, learning to run my own business.
- I already know how to run a business, I just wanted a refresher on business plan drafting.
- During the program, I may have been able to afford to take night classes, working toward finishing my degree.
- For the program, you have to have at least 25% of what they’d pay you over the course of it – before it starts – to contribute as your own portion of start-up costs. In my case, over $3500. In the BANK.
- Also, it’s in a classroom for at least five mornings a week, three hours at a time. For nearly three months. Thereafter, at least one meeting per month for the remaining six months or so.
- I have a kid. Who requires childcare if I’m not the one taking care of her.
- Childcare isn’t free.
- She’s starting preschool next month, two afternoons a week for approximately two hours each day. She’s on the wait-list for five mornings a week, instead.
- I don’t know when, or if, the space will open up for her in the mornings, at least during the course of the program.
- Less childcare costs? I’d get paid $40 a week to attend this program and be expected to work full-time getting a business running.
- It’s not gonna happen.
Also filed under the category of “fuck this shit”:
- At some point in the near future, my support will be 50% or less of what it is now. Which is what I agreed to a year ago and totally legit. {so no one get testy about that.}
- One of the blogs I get paid to write for ate it today, without any notice.
- Preschool costs money too.
- And I’ll likely still need additional childcare just to get the work I do now done, plus the new stuff I’ll have to take on to make up for discontinued spousal support.
- I’m going to take Zoë to a naturopath very shortly. I believe most of the ones I’ve had recommended to me start at $160 an hour.
- Naturopaths are totally not covered by the free Canadian medical everyone seems to think we get.
- Unless you’re the recipient of premium assistance, because your income qualifies you to pay nothing. Which I am.
- Then, they will subsidize naturopathic care. $23 an appointment.
- I thought that after the slump, I’d bounce back with some energy. Nyet. I could really use that hyperactivity, dammit.
I have a plan for the need-more-childcare aspect.
The rec centre that Zoë goes to playtime at, where I go to the gym sometimes, where the library we go to is, that has free wifi? Offers childminding for $3 an hour, two mornings and one afternoon a week – during playtime. I can work in the library; she can play; it’ll buy me another six hours a week for, like, $18. WIN.
Which means that I won’t be able to use that time to go to the gym. Which means I’ll have to start working out at home. So, I need a really cushy yoga mat for that. There’s $30, at least. Add on a cheap jogging stroller and we’re looking at at least $150 in exercise equipment. Plus the time to even work out what with the three year old that will be here. Fuggedaboutit.
So, back to the original plan. Business writing, blogging and web-design to pay our bills and for a single distance-ed class at a time, as I can afford it.
Apparently, within say, five years, I’ll have completed the other half of my degree – if they let me use the decade-old credits I already hold a 3.7 GPA in. And I’ll be able to move onto the two-year, full-time naturopathy program I want to take {today}.
And, I’ll have a pretty fat ass.
