Every time I go to write a new blog post, I will go to publish it, and I forget to save it along the way and then it deletes the whole piece of work when I refresh the page! Agh! I wrote a couple days ago and that happened… I was so mad that I just didn’t post at all.

I am officially done with my first week of school and that is a topic worthy of its own post to be quite honest… I lost my grants on the 11th hour of the first day of school forcing me into two options:

A) drop out of school or,

B) ask dad to fund the quarter until I could appeal and petition to get my grant money back.

I really thought about this one and as mad as my dad is about putting $1,500 on his credit card, I think he would be more mad if I did all this work and put in all this money and didn’t get the piece of paper out of it (a degree).

So I am kicking ass and taking names. I am still waiting on my petition to go through so I can pay dad back and afford the rest of my bills for the month. I am already a month ahead in math as far as assignments go. I just have to log in my eight hours in the online math program a week and that’s my class participation. My next assignment isn’t due until October 21st and I am halfway done with that assignment but in order to “participate” I have to be actually doing work for eight hours every week which is harder than you think. This math is coming back to me like nothing else so I whip through it really fast and then I get done with an assignment and only 10 minutes have gone by and I still need 7 more hours for the week! This week being my first I have about twenty minutes left to go so I am taking a quick blog break in order to reset and recuperate.

As far as abnormal psych goes, this online system is really cohesive and doesn’t require nearly as much reading and more audio/visual stuff so it uses different parts of the brain to help you learn rather than just reading a textbook. So scratch what I said before. I am loving this online textbook program that focuses on what you don’t know and not the things that won’t be on the test. I got an 86% on the first quiz and I thought that wasn’t too shabby. Room for improvement but not very far to go at all which is nice.

My college success class is a joke but I have an A in it and it should be easy credits. I enjoy the work since it is listening to TED Talks and writing what I think about them. I take it seriously enough so I can complete the week’s work in two hours on every Monday and focus the rest of my time on the classes that matter.

As far as my funding goes, I failed my geology class last quarter and my degree is quote “taking too long for me to graduate” so they pulled my grants and work study so the job I was going to do on campus I can no longer do and if I don’t get the grants back, I will be forced to drop out of school. So I petitioned for my grants stating how much I need them and how hard I have and am willing to work to keep them up. I think the review is over and I am just waiting on funding now but who knows? I am not holding my breath.

My mental health has been decent the past few days as I am hitting my stride with school and it makes me feel good about myself. I may not be moving out anytime soon, but I have a purpose and I am succeeding at my purpose. My gambling has gotten really bad again which is also why I am so desperate to get this grant money…

Not to gamble it but to use it towards bills because I expected more income than what I received and so I spent every dime of my paycheck thinking I had more money coming in to cover the gambling addiction but that failed. My parents found out I was gambling again and my mom suggested two things:

a) doing a self ban at both casinos near my house so I can’t go in there at all and,

b) having my parents hold onto my money and only give it out when I “need” it.

Here is the problem with both of those ideas and I am not just saying it to be offensive or defensive over my gambling habit but there are a bunch of casinos all over the greater Seattle area and if I ban myself from the two by my house, I am just going to go further to gamble. The other issue with my parents having my money is it doesn’t teach me responsibility for my own actions.

Actions obviously have repercussions and up until this very point I have been bailed out every single time something has gone wrong. I have never missed a debt payment of any kind or missed any bills because of my gambling habit. I think I need to suffer the consequences to really “feel the pain” of this because I am not at gambling rock bottom. I haven’t learned my lesson and as embarrassing as it is to say that and to think no I am not done ruining my life but it’s true. I still have people in my life who either support me gambling or enable me to gamble and as much as I don’t want to cut out those people, it is hard because I want to control and have control over my addiction but as I have learned first hand, addiction controls you; you don’t control it.

All I can do is move forward. I have 24 hours sober of gambling my new sobriety birthday is 09/23/2022. All I can do is say I am not gonna gamble right now. But to be honest, the urge to download an online sports book and bet online, although illegal, sounds amazing. See I don’t think that last sentence made any sense because I am too busy fantasizing gambling that I can’t even type!

Shhhh. Take a deep breath.

I finished my math homework so I don’t have to do any other homework on this shift. I might just work ahead to keep myself awake and entertained. I could watch tv but there is nothing ever on.

WRONG

I just sat here aimlessly for a couple of hours

Blogtober is coming so be ready!

Dani