Dream Therapy. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

I’ve suffered from depression a few times in my life. It’s been chronic at times, and this has gone on since I was about fourteen. There are times, long periods, when I have been happy, and it was held at bay—yet I also remember my best girlfriend holding me as I cried, for reasons I could not describe. Those few years were the happiest time of my life, probably because I was getting laid—

Go figure.

That was a long time ago. But the fact is, I was suicidal at the age of twenty-six. All this over a woman. (A different one. – ed.)

Fifteen years ago, the same thing again when I lost my home, and got chucked in jail, (the bogus charge was later dropped), the loonie bin (that one’s on the record permanently) a couple of times. When some authority figurine tells you that there is something wrong with you, you tend to listen. What else you gonna do? This guy’s gone to school for a real long time and there are two cops standing behind you.

This time it went on for a year and a half, when every day, multiple times a day, I thought about suicide—and worse. I thought about killing other people, cops even. Mostly to make them pay. It was only when I realized that they were wrong, and that there was nothing really wrong with me, well…that was what saved me.

This shit can come and it can go, and yet we do have some control, because we have some experience, some coping skills after all these years. For one thing, we drink like a fish, smoke like a chimney, and say fuck a lot.

For some reason, winter seems a lot worse than summer, when at least I can go and sit on a beach for a couple of hours. In winter, I’m kind of on lockdown, for an average of twenty-two and a half hours a day. That’s the trouble with the Ontario Disability Support Program, all of that state-sponsored isolation.

This winter is better than last winter, when I definitely suffered from some depression.

This results in a lot of tailgaters being pulled over, dragged from their vehicles and beaten to death by the side of the road. (Just kidding.)

Last winter, bad enough, was better than the winter before.

A year ago, say October or November, I managed to hook up with a few ‘shrooms. I bought a gram, and then a gram, and then another gram. I’d been reading about micro-dosing, and I thought why not give it a try. It’s not going to kill me, right? Supposedly, it is an aid in battling depression and yet how would one ever quantify this…??? No one can say. None of them are scientists, and a lot of them are assholes.

I’ve been self-medicating since I was fifteen years old, with varying degrees of success.

Micro-dosing on mushrooms, (psilocybin), involves taking about a fifth or maybe only a tenth of a gram. You can feel the coldness all down along the spine, (it’s working all right) and the hyper-awareness of one’s breathing. Colours and sensations are lightly enhanced, and yet you aren’t hallucinating. At that level, it’s more of a tonic.

This story could go on forever, I won’t waste your valuable time. There are any number of things that you could try, not the least of which is to try and be a little bit more like me.

So, for whatever reason, melatonin is an aid in dreaming. Think about what it’s doing: it’s liberating the subconscious, in an analogous way, (it’s a completely different chemical process), to a micro-dose of a good hallucinogenic. I can vouch for this. When I wake up in the middle of the night due to some unfortunate pounding incident, you know, like from a neighbouring apartment, I can honestly say that I have been having really crazy dreams lately—and I haven’t been all that depressed. Although I did have a few crying jags today, that’s probably just a little back pain, life circumstances, and a few poor moral choices along the way. Sure, some of that comes from fucking bullshit, the death of a loved one, abject and hopeless poverty, living in geared-to-income-housing and the like.

Like the way my brother has changed, living in the rather grim 9-14 here in Sarnia, Ontario.

My nephews live there too. (Louis sure hopes they make it out of there someday. – ed.)

The dreams seem to go on and on. When I wake up, I can still sort of remember the most dominant or startling scene, and in going back to sleep, my thought is, ‘Boy, do I want to dream some more’. It works pretty well. I’ve seen family members, my best friend from way back when, the only thing missing so far is that first, really good girlfriend. The second one wouldn’t be bad either. The third one, maybe not so much...

Yeah, the visuals are really something. The cities, the towns, caves, cliffs and sparkling underground rivers, the odd-ball interiors, all up and down in some really skinny buildings, the tunnels, the boats and the cars and the crashing alien spaceships are really something.

Dreaming is cathartic to some extent. More than anything, it would appear to be the imagination at play.

Maybe that’s what was missing: my mind needs to play.

Maybe it's just me, way down inside, that needs to play...

As circumstances presently stand, the daily thoughts can be pretty grim sometimes, as we try and figure out where our next meal is coming from.

END

If you really loved me, you'd check out my books and stories on iTunes.

Thank you for reading.

 

Some Respectful Suggestions for the Province of Ontario. Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako




Okay. I just sent this email to incomesecurity@ontario.ca 


Hey, guys.


May I respectfully suggest.

This government would do a very great service to Ontario’s 750,000 clients of the ODSP if they were to raise the allowable earnings from business and employment.

This might be to raise the rate for a single person from $200.00 up to $500.00 per month, and something on the order of $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 per month for single adults with a family of four, i.e., three dependents. A second spouse might qualify for another $350.00 in this scheme.

This government might also consider reducing the rate of clawback, say going from fifty cents on the dollar to something more like twenty-five percent.

The mileage rate for business, employment or medical travel should be raised one cent per year for the next fifteen years, reflecting relatively high fuel and transportation costs and the aging of the population, with a view to preventative medicine and quality of life.

This government should consider a Special Housing Benefit for clients of the Ontario Disability Support Program. This would be over and above proposed and pending provincial and federal housing benefits. This is because clients on the base pension are still at thirty-five or forty percent below the poverty line, this at a time when rents are easily running at 70 % of the pension, in this writer’s experience. Clients are still lining up at food banks, scrambling for odd jobs, and trying to avoid making the smallest mistake, which is stressful to say the least.

Certain disincentives to employment should be addressed, not the least of which is certain bogus mathematical processes of the ODSP and Ontario Works.

Consider the following problem, (and I know you will laugh when you read it. Yet you also know it is true.)

A client makes exactly $200.00 over the allowable limit in any given year. Let’s call it 2017. 

This entitles the ODSP to a fifty percent clawback, of $100.00, off of the total yearly pension and an overpayment is assessed.

The next year, the client works exactly the same hours at the same rate of pay. They’re $200.00 over the allowable earnings limit. Again, the ODSP has the right to assess an overpayment of fifty percent. And so, therefore, ergo, they take another $100.00 off of the yearly pension benefit. As we can easily see, a pension, (using nice, simple, round figures), that once stood at $13,500.00 per year is being eroded, at a rate of $100.00 per year, and yet the client is no better off—in fact, in this scenario, the fact that they are working, no more and no less hours, at the same rate of pay, chips away at their eligible benefit.

They’re losing a hundred bucks a year, for the privilege of saying that they’re working.

Of course, most of us aren’t really capable of doing the math, are we?

And we never think to ask the question.

Louis

Hey, before you go, please check out my books and stories on iTunes.

Thank you for reading.

Accounting 101: Those Pesky ODSP Income, Mileage and Expense Reports for Business and Employment.

Louis Shalako

When filling out the Income and Expense Report form for the Ontario Disability Support Program, it is important to get all the information first. This report form is therefore filled out last.

It doesn’t matter whether you fill out the mileage form or the time sheets first. I do the mileage form(s), using rough notes that I collect day-by-day. My rough notes give mileage readings, where I worked, (perhaps from two or three different part-time gigs) and I also put down the number of hours. I have a clipboard. There is a pen and a few sheets of paper on it.

When I get in the car, I write down the date, the destination, and the mileage.

When I get to work, I write down the mileage, if I go somewhere on business, including Shared Services, I write down the before and after mileage.

The mileage forms are the most tedious and so I do them first. I do a few entries, checking them off on the rough notes as I go. I take little breaks because I hate paperwork. The whole thing might take an hour and a half on a bad day, i.e., I’ve been busy making too much money.

Then I go through and make up official time sheets. I check them off as I go.

The next thing to do is to gather all of your receipts and statements. Keep them all in the same place, and yet separate from your personal, household accounts. I write off the phone, the internet and other necessary business expenses. If I buy stamps, envelopes or computer equipment, I keep the receipt. In the case of my phone, the invoice actually comes to my email inbox and so I just print that out once a month. I print out my bank activity once a month.* If you have a business vehicle, keep all receipts for repairs, insurance, licenses and stickers. I do the math on a blank sheet and share that with the ODSP, who apparently aren’t very good at that sort of thing…

Add up all income. This is the figure that goes on the Income Report. Add up all mileage, multiply that by the rate of $0.40. This gives a figure in dollars. Enter the mileage and the dollar amount on the Income Report. Any slot on the form that is empty, I just put a stroke through it so they know that I saw it. (Nothing to report.)

Enter expenses in the appropriate slots on the Income Report. For example, there is a separate slot for banking charges. This is eligible, especially so as the ODSP may require you to have a separate account for business. Enter this amount, your monthly charges of $10.95 or whatever. Individual cases and circumstances may differ.

In my own case, I enter phone and internet, added together, on the appropriate line.

If you buy a printer, enter it under ‘equipment’, etc. If you take income and put it toward an investment into the business, it’s better to get approval, and enter this into ‘approved business investment’. (Assuming you bought a forklift or something.) This one appears to be for major investments into the business. A $700.00 computer probably doesn’t require approval assuming your old one blew up or something. It is, after all, essential to the business, in much the same way a radiator repair is essential to the business vehicle. I would never ask permission for that, as it is just plain bad policy.

On or about the seventh of the next month, I go to Shared Services downtown. I photocopy all sheets, statements and receipts.

I make two copies and give the ODSP the originals except the internet bill, the original I keep for myself. They want an original, pen and ink signature on the forms, which is just my interpretation. I don't really need that for my own purposes.

I keep one copy for my own records, and also provide a copy to my major employer and business mentor for their own records and tax-reporting. This gives me backup hard-copies in the case of fire, loss or destruction—and I don’t have to ask the ODSP for it.

Generally, it is more favourable to claim mileage as opposed to keeping fuel receipts.

This allows you to offset income which would otherwise be clawed back at the rate of $0.50/dollar once you get over their punitive, $200.00/month allowable income limit/barrier.

Just as an example, Party A spent roughly $10.00/day to put gas in the car in a recent month. That’s $300.00 in fuel expense for the business. Yet the mileage worked out to $541.00. This results in $231.00 in offset income. The client gets to keep that.

And why not?

You earned it, after all.

END

*My book royalties are shown on the printout of my bank account, which I report separately. 

Interestingly, the ODSP adds it all together after a year and scratches their collective heads, trying to figure out how to ding me for an overpayment. So far, I just haven't made that kind of money, although in the past, (2003), I have been forced to write them a cheque from my business account.

Thank you for reading.