I echo your feelings. At this point in life I have accepted that I am unemployable. I volunteer a bit which helps break up the monotony of stationary life. I also travel throughout the year, doing round trip excursions. This makes me appreciate my home life more & understand the limitations of my family. Seeing that I am in a longterm homelife situation with kids, an apt, wife; I must continue to endure as long as I can. Balance has been what I have always wanted in life & I fight to keep all aspects of my life balanced.
I actually am a decent worker when I want to be there or I feel that I am wanted. I cannot stand the applying, interviewing & rejection. I would much rather apply myself wholeheartedly as a volunteer without income. With me as soon as the topic of income, value & self worth come into play; I am no longer interested. This also applies when jobs offer a decent pay. To have lived, survived & thrived without income for so long; no amount is worth giving up my peace of mind. My serenity is achieved through balance. If I am slaving away somewhere, miserably working then I am away from my home & homelife. I stopped working for hourly pay decades ago. For me, someone who is not motivated by income but more so by experience; it is hard to find interesting & rewarding employment opportunities that satisfy me.
Others may hate on me for figuring out what works for me in solving my cost of living expenses outside of employment. My life is not perfect but I have found a way to make it all work together.
Since the wagon that I drag through life involves others, I must consider them. I dream of getting an RV & converting my wife & teen daughter to experiment in the nomadic lifestyle that I so desperately crave.
Obviously if we all decide that we are gonna buy an RV or Bus to live in; I will have the motivation to earn an income to accomplish that dream. What makes me sad is having less & less dreams. It is easy for me to dream up epic stuff to do that will neglect my responsibilities as a father/husband doing them. What is more difficult is convincing my family that there is a whole world out there to explore. To convince them that nothing is certain in this world; that no job, no apartment & no amount of money will guarantee happiness or insulate anyone from tragedy. What I do know about time is that it is finite. I feel like most of my time is wasted, wondering, waiting.
I often feel as if I am waiting for the next illness, injury, eviction or arrest to confirm this belief. Only when I reduce my motives to those which lead me towards freedom am I happy. To constantly be at odds about achieving my happiness only at the expense of others security is draining. I feel that having experienced both lifestyle choices of being stationary & nomadic that I can make sound decisions for our collective future. One issue is that we are egalitarian & I am not a dictator.
I know that we can relocate to many places in the US or make a lateral move of misery right here in our own city. We can live in public housing if we needed to. We can always get food stamps. Our quality of life lived as a stationary family is predictable; it is not great but it is safe. For the last few years our home-life has improved. Secretly I am trying to convert them into travelers. We have been without traditional heat source for a few years, we have a cooktop but no oven just a toaster oven & microwave. We have a dorm fridge but no freezer. We acquired most of our furnishings second hand for free You know what? It all works just as well as there full size & or expensive new counterparts. Our daughter is home schooled & My hope is that eventually I will succeed at building my dream life before she departs to start her own adult life.
Since I still must retain my sanity; I found some stuff that I do to stay sane. I go out & travel doing roundtrip adventures throughout the year. I volunteer often to stay busy. I have a network of likeminded friends (mostly old punks like me). When a project or job comes along that pays cash that I know will only last s long as I let it; I will work. When it is time to quit, I quit! I have honed my inner compass for when to quit after having worked much since age 12. I am now age 40. My work goals are never ever to add to the economy, to be self sufficient or to seek approval in society. If I had a short term goal like saving for a bus/rv that would totally revolutionize how & where we collectively live; I would work like a dog to save up & make that happen. While living in my apt I am constantly owing 4-9 months in back rent that has us always living with an uncertain future. This still doesn't motivate me to work. I wish I could work without my family spending the money on frivolous shit; If that was the case we would have a fully converted bus out front or our own owned piece of real estate. Instead we pay for another persons mortgage; so far over 12 years we have paid $75k to rent an apt in a house worth $210k.
I work to feel good on the inside while not exploiting others or adding to what is wrong in the world. If I earn some cash great but I refuse to give even a sliver of my soul for the sake of profit.