How to deal with a financial set back

Dear Bloggers,


Today I had to ask for a loan from a relative and this all due to the fact that our car broke down, the tax office had their things sorted and send a huge bill and on top of it all I got fined for a accident that I cannot proof if it was me who caused it. Good gracious where should I get all this money from? Well with lead in my shoes, I knocked on a good Samaritans door. We thought up an arrangement and I will pay it back step by step, bless these good people.

When you're sinking in debt, it's frustrating, stressful and can make you feel like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. It can be pretty easy to feel as if you will never get rid of your debt, but you can. There are many different things you can do to pay off your debt sooner. Here are some important tips and tricks for the broke and desperate for getting rid of your debt.

Think of the Extra Money You Spend Each Month -

I figured out quickly enough that we had approx. 500 euro less each month after I had to stop sailing and that is a major set back, Although I may not be swimming in cash, chances are you spend extra money every month. You may pay to eat out, go to the movies, purchase things you love, etc. How much money do you spend each month on things like this? If you add up the amount of extra money you spend each month, you will probably be surprised to know how much it really is! If you cut down on your spending each month, you can pay off your debt much faster. For instance, rather than spending 20% of your income, spend 10% on extra things. This way, you can still enjoy the fruits (eventhough it is not easy sometimes.) of your work and you'll be working toward being debt free.

Make a List of Your Debts -

It will help you to pay off your debts if you have all of the information in front of you. Make a complete list of your debts, including what is owed, who the creditor is, what the interest rate is, when the payments are due and what the minimum payments are. If possible, list them in order from the highest interest rates to the lowest. The ones at the top should be given more attention than the lower interest rate bills. So, paying the minimum payment on all of them except for the higher interest rate bills is a good idea. For the top ones, send any extra amount that you can afford. This will help you pay off your debt faster and save money by not paying so much interest.

Debt is anything but fun and can make you feel as if you will never be free again. However, using the methods above, you can pay off your debt and experience a clean credit report once again! Good luck.

For the first time I felt that I was drowning, it’s a hard knock life for us.

The Old Sailor,

Counting down to a big change...........or will this be amrageddon for me.

Dear Bloggers,


I wanted Bruce Willis to play the starring role in a movie about my life. I wanted to write a book about my job the way Paolo Coelho does. I wanted to speak to large groups of eager educators and make them laugh with my nutty remarks. These were all goals of mine when I was not suffering from anything, and was full of energy and ideas before I started sailing. I wanted to find happiness through success and this would only happen if you worked hard and did your very best. At least that was what I thought when I started years back making something out of my miserable life, when I did my days in the army I had to find a job to make some money. I was motivated and focused to make a difference and become something in live. I started off as a dishwasher in a local hotel and worked myself up as a bartender and waiter in the hotel restaurant. After a few years I became headwaiter.

Unfortunately there was only work in the summertime and during the winters I did many different tempsjobs. I worked in factories, became an iceskate essembler, was taxidriver and freelanced in the weekends as a bartender in one of the bigger towns. After a few years I had finished my education as
bartender/waiter and dreamt about earning good money and start my own bar elsewhere. First of all I went to Australia with a friend and worked for a wholesaler in Sydney. We made enough money to support ourselves and had a good time. But when the recession broke out we lost our jobs and had to turn back after a few months that was the first setback in my life, but soon I carried on.

And that spring I found a new challenge I wanted to become a sailor with a great salary. My past from the army gave some hindrances and I had to try again, and I ended up on a cruiseship. The life onboard was not very glamorous and the sun and Jim Beam became my best friends. When I came back home I applied for a job as a bartender on a ferry again. This was luxury compared to the liner as I had my own cabin. I hoped that I could climb up the carreerladder and be headbartender at least. Those where all soapbubbles about to burst as in the higher ranks there was no place for me and I saw a lot of good and bad "bosses" in my sailing days. The months between contracts and ships I filled with doing temp jobs and later on I worked as a freight driver. I drove the big cemetmixing trucks and delivered beers and soda for the Heineken company. Until I could not lift heavy anymore due to costochondritis and I needed to do an office job. I started to work as a receptionist on board again.

Everything was going exactly as I had hoped for and planned. I got a job onboard a ferry to the United Kingdom and everything in life was picking up again and we bought a new house to have more space. I never felt at home in this house so we did put up the for sale sign again and will move back to where we came from. The housing market is very slow and we did not have any serious buyers, but we have time as we do not need to sell. If we sell it, it is another part of my life that can be closed. There were good moments and bad moments for us and believe me there were more bad than good ones. It relieved me when my wife agreed with me that I could not really be happy here and that we both missed the lake, why did we move here anyway? My wife and I wanted to live closer to her parents so they could easier help out babysitting. We hardly ever had any benefit out of it and our kids went to a nanny two blocks away.

I did a good job as there were not many complaints on my behalf, paperwork was not my hobby and will never be. And I really enjoyed what I was doing although there were deadlines to catch. And those deadlines were giving me at least a lot of stress situations as I was mr. plentyfix and I could turn a bad situation into a reasonable one. Until the load was getting to heavy as I could not say NO. When slowly my body started to give up on me. It started with pain in my hands and fingers.The rest of my body quickly followed and by the next month, I was changed into an old man as I was completely turned into a rheumatic person. I was diagnosed with FMS is a rare neurological condition that involves neurotransmitters giving the wrong signals and telling the system of muscles and the nerves throughout the body that I should feel pain. It is rarely damaging, but recovery can be very slow and often patients are left with residual effects. There is also the possibility of relapse when you have a lot of stress.

After being diagnosed with fibromyalgia by the rheumatologist from the local hospital, I was in good health, but body and mind were still ravaged from the syndrome. I was unable to stand or walk for a longer period of time and had very poor use of my hands. I spent the next three months in a local health center where I received three intense therapy sessions a week. By the end of the summer. I was fully discharged from the care of doctors and specialists and had no residual effects. I felt nearly like the same person I was the day before this all started. At least, I thought I was the same person. Until a moisty day came along and I was hit by muscle pains from hell.

Life is like a pop quiz. You can’t plan for it and you only get one chance to do your best. My breakthrough came one day in rehab when I was asking for help to get through everything. I stopped asking when I realized that I had to beat this on my own. I needed to listen to people who couldn’t help
themselves and reach them a helping hand. I knew that I was strong enough to fight this battle with my body and I felt left alone. I learned life doesn’t follow your planner or your schedule. I had to learn to walk instead of running all the time. Life has only one purpose…to happen. If you only focus on all the things that can go wrong and being afraid that your body will give up, you will simply miss the beauty in the things that happen around you and also the small successes that you book yourself. I changed a lot during the course of those months, but more than anything, my belief in the power of the human spirit changed the most. People are capable of extraordinary things. We all have the power to take our current situations in life and make them better. The road to change is littered with obstacles, but they are not permanent hindrances, only temporary roadblocks.

I returned to recently to the job market and applied for lighter jobs the last few months and quickly I realized things were different. From a sailor with no energyloss, I had become a relaxed housedaddy that does not care about stressed situations anymore. A new episode in my book of life had started by ripping out the balck pages. I felt like I was watching someone else and I soon realized that it was the new me. That man in the faded green shirt wasn’t the man who started of this year as a slightly handicapped person. I no longer wanted to change the world. I didn’t want any awards or taps on my shoulder, telling me that I did a good job. I wanted to be happy and I couldn’t be that as a sailor do to the long working days, I needed to start off in something completely new. This summer, I will say goodbye to my career as a sailor and take a job as a busdriver on the citybus with a limited amount of working hours. While taking a drop in pay and, in some peoples eyes, taking a step backwards in my career, I found I had taken a huge step forward. I was doing something again, working with people something I cared deeply about.

I will start working again on Monday and I am really looking forward to it, as it has been a tough year with a lot of ups and downs. And people in offices that do not understand at all why you want to go back to work so badly. They do not see the financial trouble that you have as you need to fight the governments to get some benefits that you are entitled to. Also sitting at home is not my hobby and I am defenitly a lousy housekeeper. The disadvantage that you have as your curriculum vitae tells that you are a person full with adventure as you did so many different jobs. And the lack of experience will give you a lot of rejected applications and therefor very stressfull.

In addition to a change in my career, I had a change in my priorities. I decided to put my wife and family first and everything else as a distant second. I focused on being a "good" husband and having a happy marriage. I rediscovered my passion for my wife and also for recreative cycling, something I had started to lose during my last years of sailing. I took advantage of every good weather day and made sure that I would get a fair set of kilometres on the clock and biked like it was my last day on Earth. Of course the next day I was hoping it was the last day on Earth as usual I was a complete wreck due to the pain as I had overdone it again. I was totally out of balance and I could not except that the old me was not coming back. A psychologist told me that there was no need for finding the old me as he was dead and buried.

Together with my doctor, fysiotherapist, ergotherapist and a dietician I have put my life on the tracks again. And my train is not the fastest but at least it is rolling again. Only when we go uphill we need a bit of help, all the other parts I do without any help. The big difference with the old train is that this one has a break and there is no doubt that it will be used. The new me looks quite similair to the old me but inside there have been big changes.

Hopefully the new me will be a success and I do not need to get higher up. I have the ambition to do a job as good as it gets. I still hope one day there’s a movie made about me. I still hope Bruce Willis will be in the starring role. I still want to write a book. I still want to speak to large groups. These are all goals of mine. I am still motivated and focused. But I have to take care about my energy levels and make sure that my body can handle it. I now hope to find success through happiness. I want to be me…and I’m fine enough with that. Maybe I should change my hair, my house, my clothes, my future, my soul and my name.

How would that sound "The Old Busdriver?"

The Old Sailor,

Open Letter about Fibromyalgia

Dear Bloggers,

As I became active on a Dutch forum about FM, I found this letter and had the feeling that I should share this with you. Just to get you a better picture of what I feel. Do not worry I have translated the letter from Dutch to English so do not hang me up on small spellingmistakes.

And as we all know that life is brutal, but still there is no reason to let your head hang down.

This how I look at real friends: a friend is someone who dances with you in the sunlight and walks beside you in the shadow as that is all what live is about.

Open letter to people who do not have Fibromyalgia:

If you have Fibromyalgia, it means many things change and that many of these things are invisible.

It is not visible as a paraplegic.

Most people do not understand even a small bit of what it is to have FM and living with the effects it has on your life.

People who think that they understand what you have are normally poorly informed.

To be informed, and who can understand? .......

There are certain things from me I want you to understand before you condemn me ...

Please understand that being sick does not mean that I am no man or woman anymore.

Most of the day I spend in a lot of pain and exhaustion, and if you visit often, I am not very pleasant company, but I am still in this body.

I am still winding myself up about work and my family and friends, and usually I love that you also talk about the things that are concerning you.

Please understand the difference between "happy" and "healthy".

If you have flu you probably feel miserable, but I have been sick for many years.

I can not always feel miserable, in fact I work hard, not to be miserable.

So when you talk to me and I sound happy, it means that I'm happy.

That is all.

It does not mean that I have no pain or being terribly tired, or that I am getting better, or whatever.

Please do not say: "Oh, you already sound better!".

I do not sound better, I sound cheerful.

If you want to say something about it, you can.

Understand well that being able to stand for 10 minutes does not mean that I can also stand for 20 minutes, or an hour.

And since I could stand 30 minutes yesterday does not mean that I can do the same today.

With many diseases you are either paralyzed, or you can move.

This disease is more complicated.

Everything described above also applies to "sit", "walk", "believe", "thinking of others" and so on ...

It applies to everything.

That is what Fibromyalgia does.

Please understand that Fibromyalgia is variable.

It is possible (for me that is normal) that one day I can walk large pieces and back while I have trouble the other day just to reach the kitchen.

Do not attack me with: "But yesterday you did!" if you want me to do something, ask if I can.

In a similar situation, maybe at the last moment I will cancel an appointment, if that happens do not to take it personally.

Please understand me that “going out and doing things” not make me feel better and I often feel a lot worse.

If you tell me that I should move a lot or that I should lose weight (or even gain), or I should buy a training device, even to go to gym or something like that ... then I will do that.

I am emotionally hurt (and I need to cry sometimes) and that is not good ... all these things I would do if I could, I would like to do and you know it?

I work for myself with my doctor and physiotherapist, and I do all the exercises I should do in my situation.

Another decision that I really acts is: "You have only yourself but harder to tackle ..."

It is clear that I work for myself with my doctor and physiotherapist, and I do all the exercises I should do in my situation.

Another judgement that I really hate is: "You have to be a bit harder on yourself..."

It is clear that Fibromyalgia has to deal directly with the muscles and because my muscles are not developping the same way as yours , I distroy more than I do good when I follow your advice and it will cost me days or weeks to return where I was and to recover from even a single activity.

Please understand that if I say I need to have a seat.

Too lie down or need pillows, and that I need it now - it can not be postponed because there is no time for it, or that I am not at home. (or for any other reason).

Fibromyalgia does not care about that.

If you have a good idea for me, than keep it for yourself.

It is not something that I do not appreciate, and it is not because I do not want to be better.

It is all because everyone has a good idea for me.

In the beginning I did everything that I was advised and gave it a try, but I realized I was consuming so much energy to try things that I made myself only more ill, and not better.

If there would be anything that all Fibromyalgia patients could help or could cure them, then all persons with Fibromyalgia would have known.

There is a global network (Internet and others) between people with Fibromyalgia, if there would be something that might cure us, we would know.

If you have read everything and you want to give me a good suggestion, please do so, but do not expect me that I immediately go after it and give it a try straight away.

I will then consider it and discuss with my doctor. In many different ways I depend you - people who are not sick - I need you to visit me when I'm sick or when I can not go out myself... Sometimes I need your help when I need to do some shopping, cooking or housekeeping.

I'll probably might even need your help to drive me to the doctor or physiotherapist I need you also in a different way ..... you are my link to the outside world ... if you will not visit me then I'll maybe not see you that often. ... and, as much as possible, I need it that you will try to understand me.

The Old Sailor,

A christmas story

Dear Bloggers,

As I am not much of a Christmas fan, but I will tell you a little Christmas story.
After this, I will put the keyboard in the corner for the coming days.
I shall try to write one more just before the end of the year.
Well here the story comes, have some happy holidays and celebrate Christmas how you think it is right.

On a dark, cold and storm full night, that is how it starts.
It was Christmas Eve.
It was snowing, and I was all alone outside, and I have no family.

So, I'm just sitting there, minding my own business, when out of nowhere, someone sits down next to me.
It's a man, I can tell, because he's wearing shorts and his legs are not shaved.
I ignore him.

Then, he decides to speak.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," he said in a soft voice.
His voice was deep, and he had an accent, I guessed north of England somewhere.
I continued to ignore the mystery-man.
"Don't you have somewhere to go?
It's not safe out here.
"I have nowhere to go."
I responded finally.



"Don't you have family?" he asked, turning towards me slightly.
I still did not look up at him.
"Not anymore.
They kicked me out."
"On Christmas Eve?!" the man exclaimed, sounding shocked.
"They kicked you out on Christmas eve, when it's snowing and like, five below zero?! Jeez!"

"Well, it was their choice."
"Do you have a place to stay at least?
A friend's house maybe?"
"No."
"Alright".
Come and go with me to my place.
You can stay there.

" Alarmed, I looked up at the man".
"Umm..." was all I could say.
"Please?
I'll give you some dry, warm clothes.

" His blue eyes were wide, and i was shocked by how beautiful they were.
(was this the so called Messiah?)
"Why are you being nice to me?" I asked quietly.
"Because no one deserves to be alone on Christmas.
Now, come on, before you freeze out here."



"What's your name?" he asked, suddenly realising he didn't know it.
I did not answer but there was hot chocolate on the stove, and I got a very cozy place to sleep.

I thought by myself:
"Like, a half an hour ago".
I was outside all alone, and he brought me back here.
"I seriously thought you were going to die, because it's so bloody cold out there."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next morning, I woke up, comfortable and warm.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS, MATE!!!!!!!!!!!" satisfied, he skipped out of the room towards the Christmas tree.
Suddenly, i felt sad.

Everyone else was going to have a great, present-filled Christmas.
Except for me.
"Everybody needs a present on Christmas," he told me.
A lump came to my throat.

I'd never had a Christmas present before.
"Open it!" With shaking fingers, i took off the wrapper.
"thank you." I whispered, tears forming in my eyes.



This kind of thing was new to me.
I'd never had someone be so kind.

Even though it was something simple it was given from the heart.
"Personally, a smile is all I want."
I smiled at him.

He took me to my house to pick up some of my clothes.
They answered the door.
"What are you doing here?" my wife snarled.
"We just need to pick up some of his things, ma'am," He said, squeezing my hand for support.

"And to wish you a Merry Christmas, of course."
My wife stepped aside.
In almost no time, I had packed everything I needed for a new life.
A better life.

I had to make a new start again, it was all a bad dream, but it might happen for real.



"Because... not everything in live is as nice as we had hoped for".
It is just a story that might be possibly happening in anyone's live, even though it is Christmas.

If you can't get along with each other this could be your future, but in every sad story there is a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

There are some good people out there, so give the beggar some coins.
He might become your friend one day.

And get everything out of life before it is too late.
"Merry Christmas, to everyone that needs it."

The Old Sailor,