Life 101: Feeling Sad and Depressed About the Need to Power Down...

It is with a lot of sadness and regret that we find ourselves “out of options” and now I find myself left with no choice other than to start a substantial powerdown to make sure we are able to pay our ridiculously high property taxes by March 31st.

Our personal ship is not sailing so well...

We received the official notice that our home will be processed for ”Property Tax Foreclosure” unless we pay the outstanding $6,300 immediately... or lose our house.

Sadly, economic conditions have been such that our regular businesses (where we get most of our income) have been trending down sharply due to uncertainty over inflation and unrest in the world (aka: People are simply NOT spending money) and we are going to fall well short.

For the Moment, It's "Just in Case"

At this point, I am still viewing powering down as a “backup measure,” meaning that I will not be actually selling anything till the very last moment… and if we do manage to make up the shortfall in other ways, I intend to power the liquid tokens back up.

The whole thing saddens me a great deal because the Russia/Ukraine conflict is weighing down on already shaky markets even further… pushing us closer to the exact opposite of that old ”sell high/buy low” truism… where we find ourselves at the brink of having to sell at the worst possible time to fund these wretched tax obligations.

If we still had $1.00 Steem, this would not be such a big and painful deal!

Although we will get some tax relief in future years (I have been working on that, in recent weeks), we have to GET to those future years by making the existing payments.

As much as anything, I am putting this post out here as a ”marker” for my own records, for the future. Somehow, it seems important to mark significant turning points.

Definitely NOT Quitting!

The primary relevance to this community is that I just wanted to add the footnote that this decision IN NO WAY has any reflection on how I feel about this venue… the impending powerdown is purely the result of our deteriorating personal financial situation.

I've had to almost completely power down this account twice in the past, and each time I have built it back up... and I will do so, again!

I have to say, though, that I am getting very weary of this life of seemingly ever-declining income coming up against an ever-increasing cost of living. I remember my parents (who lived off interest from their investments) always complaining that they were making less and less while being forced to spend more and more on just the very basics of life.

The stuff of life is very fragile, sometimes...

I am very grateful for the rewards I do get from this community! But as a "sense of scale" for the "mountain" we are trying to climb, I'd need a month of daily $200 posts to get free and clear. And that's just not going to happen!

But I am still trying to stay in good spirits about it all!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

How about YOU? Have you had to "substantially" power down to fund a critical expense? Do you view your SteemPower as a sort of "emergency back-up" fund? Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20220225 21:20 PST
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