I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but this keeps coming up.  My life probably appears simple to people.  I feel like I keep getting people expecting me to just have a job to support myself.  I know that sounds good in theory, but there are a couple of problems.  First of all, there is the common assumption that work is always available.  Granted, I might just not be good at getting a job, but I've been through more than one occasion where I couldn't even get a job at a grocery store or something like that.  I know it feels like I ought to be able to get some kind of job, but that hasn't seemed to match with my experience.  So I'd argue that there is the possibility that I am willing but don't have the opportunity to work in the current economy.  I know that doesn't sound right ("everyone has the opportunity to work!"), but consider the fact that it took me eight months to get a very basic job once I graduated from college.

Second, even if I could get a job, another issue is that of consistency or stability.  One of the main reasons I went back to school was because I couldn't seem to get steady, consistent employment.  While I did work and had jobs, there were often long periods of unemployment in between those jobs.  In other words, even when I was trying to support myself through employment, I wasn't having overall or long-term success.  So I'd argue that I'm not just refusing to work.  In fact, I have a half-dozen job leads that may lead to some work.  So I'm not just asking for help while not doing anything myself.

I don't know if this is true, but I kind of get the sense that people have the "you can work and it's your responsibility to support yourself" view because they don't want to help out.  Granted, a lot of people don't have the means to help out, but it's interesting how we judge things.  I think maybe this all frustrates me greatly because I seriously want to be able to support myself, and have been quite frustrated at the difficulty I've had in doing so.  I'm not just being lazy and expecting people to help me out; I'm being productive and attempting to build for the future and solve these problems.  But solutions don't just magically happen; I need help in order to get there.

Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.  As I've stated, I am working on starting my own business.  From what I understand, new and small businesses are where the vast majority of economic and job growth come from.  However businesses take a while to get started, and it is often a year or two or more before they become profitable.  Amazon.com was lost money for its first seven years straight.  Should they have just shut it down and told everyone to go and support themselves, or are you glad the Amazon exists?  I found a list of other mostly well known companies which took up to twenty years to become profitable.  This is why I'm asking for help more in terms of financing or investment.  In fact I think I am partly in this current position because of not having gotten enough help in the past.