I find my self at another crossroads in life where the life I am living is no longer sustainable, and the maintenance price may be more than I can bear. It is on days like these I remember the quote "Ad Astra Ad Aspera" or "Through Hardship to the stars" or something like that. I heard it on Star Trek from Una Chin-Riley and then again from Lt. Boimler. If I am wrong, get in the comments!
I am certainly going through hardship and the choices I have to make are leading me to more of it to get where I might be able to relax again and pursue some of my dreams, if they still exist. And, if any of us with dreams still exist. If Project 2025 has its way, many of us won't live to see their dream, myself included.
Tangent. Sorry. Relevant, but not what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about the decision I have to make because of bullshit government regulation on who deserves money for food. Spoiler Alert, not the actual poor folks struggling to step out of it.
The price to stay alive is high now.
Thousands per month just to have food and shelter, while getting paid barely enough to get what you can afford.
Here are some of the ways you can lose SNAP benefits:
- If you make too much money, benefits are reduced or removed. Too much is over 1200 a month, or so. I just hit about $600 a month and I am worried mine will go down.
- If you do not provide regular updates on your income. They will send you a reminder to log in and update any changes you made, even if there are none. Failure to do within the deadline and they cut you off from benefits until you do. If you wait too long, you have to start over and reapply. Other than having a break in benefits, it might actually be a better, faster choice to just reapply after the deadline...
- If you fail to provide documentation of the money you make. Even when their website is down or non-functional and no one answers the phone, you are made to get every paystub for the last few months and somehow get them to DES. This month, I had to drive down to the DES office, wait in line for 90 minutes, and in 30 minutes finally got all the issues and how I could fix them. They were:
- I had to sign something letting folks know my adult child is currently living in my house and that I did not prepare food meals together - making sure if I share food I buy, I could lose benefits because I said I didn't. It is true enough that I signed it, but the Man will never know.
- I had to upload my last few paystubs, as they needed proof of income rather than just my estimates. Since their website didn't work, I had to upload them to a link the Person helping me sent, and then that was done.
- I had to get my boss to fill out a form showing a TON of details about my employment. I filled it out, had her review it and then sign it. Next it needs to be dropped off at the DES office which is not open until Monday, I believe.
- If you share your SNAP benefits with anyone, such as buying them food. I covered it above somewhere, but yeah. I can't share my food stamp money to feed anyone but me.
- And more ways I don't know of yet. They'll send you a letter to inform you of your new quest!
For this most recent update, they were upset about three things, each of which being a pain in the ass (see point 3, above for details) adventure for me.
- Jaz moved in. In the process of updating my income, I also added Jaz to my household.
- I started working at HiHi Donuts packing donuts for their wholesale business. Had to report this new income.
- They still want me to prove I am not working at a certain temp agency, even though I worked there once for 3 days.
It was a cryptic letter, and once I figured it out, I tried to comply but their website was not cooperating. After multiple attempts to get the site to function, including multiple calls that took about 15 minutes for them to hang up on me, I gave up and looked up the closest DES office to visit the next day. Depression and exhaustion made that become three days later. But, I was helped to solve all of the issues they had and spent quality time at the donut shop as well.
Side Note: My boss is pretty cool.
Once I drop off the papers on Monday, I wait until they decide if the info I gave them is sufficient to get to eat next month. I am sure I will get them, I just hope I don't have too much of a dip in amount or to have it get delayed too far. /sigh
To summarize the process and how I feel about it, I leave you with this. 
Walking the Path,
Me.