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Can't Find A Good Enough Hobby

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midnight340

Question

My claim just moved to Review of Evidence on ebenefits... Wichita, KS VARO (considered one of the black holes from what I hear) The ebenefits estimated time is "november 2012 to august 2013." Ain't that a specific "estimation"?!!!

My VSO has told me 4-6 months, but I am afraid to believe that.

I was given "70% PTSD non-SC" and awarded a pension as a result of my first claim. I sent good evidence to prove SC so it shouldn't be too complicated to take another look at it. But I hear the piles of claims are huge.

I keep trying to find a good enough hobby to take my mind off it, but it's tough!!! I actually do have things I like to do, but also have obsessive/compulsive tendencies along with the ptsd so it is very hard to not think about my claim constantly.

I am just posting as I needed to express this somewhere. My family got very tired of all the details in making the first claim, gathering evidence, etc. along with PTSD group attendance and all. So I have been trying to protect them and keeping everything to myself.

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@Midnight...I understand what you are going thru believe me you are not alone - I thought I was alone until I read this site - the best advise I can give is to continue to read the Success stories (they really helped me - to see others achieve success gave me motivation) I also did alot of cleaning up of my storage room and just organize my paperwork - so that all my ducks were in a row. especially if you are going to file ssdi afterwards. Start exercising by just walking outside if you can. Try to learn something new - like a language (believe me it is very hard and it is a challenge and you may never learn it but it will take your mind off the wait) also condition yourself to only check eBenefits once a month. or on Friday nights. That will also help with the wait. :) Hope this helps. It did for me.

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I hate to admit this and definitely don't want to put an even further damper on your day but I won TDIU and SSA about a year ago and while I had fun with the money, I'm still left with days that consist of waking up (if I ever fall asleep) forcing myself to eat some sort of breakfast as I'm not motivated to even eat, I then sit at my window and wait for the mail that comes at 10am and after that I just sit there. I would trade all those benefits back if I could just go back to war and live again. Beer drinking was a fun hobby but I didn't enjoy it after the first month anymore. I am 32 and completely and utterly lost. Hell I even moved to California to try and fight my way into Stanford only to find out that I might be Bi-Polar and that it was just madness going on in my head. I would love to just get away and do something wild but even then I know I'd get to where I was going and sit there. Nothing replaces true combat and if God had any Mercy he'd let those that have seen it die over in some other country so at least the loved ones back home could remember them as heroes and not that Veteran uncle or cousin that sits around and does nothing all day. I'm not even sure why I'm posting all this but I've tried the guitar, I've video-gamed. I will say this, before World of Warcraft started to suck that actually gave me something to occupy my time but Blizzard killed all that, I have thought about buying a Rifle or a pistol to go blow off some steam at a range but at this point in my life a gun in my house would not be a good thing. Well, at least today I can say that I've gotten my mail and posted a meaningless reply on hadit. I'm sorry for what you're going through brother or sister. Damn AUG2013 is a great timetable. Hell, Put in a secondary claim for anxiety for giving you a timetable of 2 years lol. I've been out 3 years now and it just keeps going downhill. Walking past all the bums in San Francisco these last few months I couldn't help but think at times that they have it right. At least when you're hungry and hot or cold and miserable you are feeling something. Here in my apartment I have a big fancy TV and a big grill, and a bunch of nice shit but thats just it. It doesn't replace that Brotherhood in the Army. I went from not being able to masturbate without 6 people knowing to not talking to a single person for days at a time. Sorry, I just wanted to add this into this thread as I can't find a good enough hobby either. I think I might try to enter and clear abandoned buildings and businesses as coming home from Iraq in 2008 it seemed there were a lot of these out of business buildings. Although the jail time for B&E would not be so great which is another reason why beer drinking is a no go at this station. I would be far worse off if I ended up in jail lol. I'm with every last one of you vets that feel this way. They should set up a website called sausage links or something that linked up random vets. I know there are a bunch of vets around me but I would want it set up like match dot com where you give preference to MOS and gender and age and OEF or OIF, hell even add sports to it, that way I wouldn't be out with some POG (love you guys but I want stories as well that go beyond, this one time, in our flag football game on FOB Falcon this dude tore his knee up so bad it was gross lol) and be dominating the conversation with stories of actual war. There are enough Veterans out there now in my age group that we should really start finding ways to link up besides randomly showing up at a group because I know I myself don't have the balls/gumption to go group meetings or the where-with-all (sp?) to even leave the house. I don't know where this is going so I'm going to end it here lol. Damn PTSD, at least I was focused for 30 minutes.

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  • HadIt.com Elder

I hate to admit this and definitely don't want to put an even further damper on your day but I won TDIU and SSA about a year ago and while I had fun with the money, I'm still left with days that consist of waking up (if I ever fall asleep) forcing myself to eat some sort of breakfast as I'm not motivated to even eat, I then sit at my window and wait for the mail that comes at 10am and after that I just sit there. I would trade all those benefits back if I could just go back to war and live again. Beer drinking was a fun hobby but I didn't enjoy it after the first month anymore. I am 32 and completely and utterly lost. Hell I even moved to California to try and fight my way into Stanford only to find out that I might be Bi-Polar and that it was just madness going on in my head. I would love to just get away and do something wild but even then I know I'd get to where I was going and sit there. Nothing replaces true combat and if God had any Mercy he'd let those that have seen it die over in some other country so at least the loved ones back home could remember them as heroes and not that Veteran uncle or cousin that sits around and does nothing all day. I'm not even sure why I'm posting all this but I've tried the guitar, I've video-gamed. I will say this, before World of Warcraft started to suck that actually gave me something to occupy my time but Blizzard killed all that, I have thought about buying a Rifle or a pistol to go blow off some steam at a range but at this point in my life a gun in my house would not be a good thing. Well, at least today I can say that I've gotten my mail and posted a meaningless reply on hadit. I'm sorry for what you're going through brother or sister. Damn AUG2013 is a great timetable. Hell, Put in a secondary claim for anxiety for giving you a timetable of 2 years lol. I've been out 3 years now and it just keeps going downhill. Walking past all the bums in San Francisco these last few months I couldn't help but think at times that they have it right. At least when you're hungry and hot or cold and miserable you are feeling something. Here in my apartment I have a big fancy TV and a big grill, and a bunch of nice shit but thats just it. It doesn't replace that Brotherhood in the Army. I went from not being able to masturbate without 6 people knowing to not talking to a single person for days at a time. Sorry, I just wanted to add this into this thread as I can't find a good enough hobby either. I think I might try to enter and clear abandoned buildings and businesses as coming home from Iraq in 2008 it seemed there were a lot of these out of business buildings. Although the jail time for B&E would not be so great which is another reason why beer drinking is a no go at this station. I would be far worse off if I ended up in jail lol. I'm with every last one of you vets that feel this way. They should set up a website called sausage links or something that linked up random vets. I know there are a bunch of vets around me but I would want it set up like match dot com where you give preference to MOS and gender and age and OEF or OIF, hell even add sports to it, that way I wouldn't be out with some POG (love you guys but I want stories as well that go beyond, this one time, in our flag football game on FOB Falcon this dude tore his knee up so bad it was gross lol) and be dominating the conversation with stories of actual war. There are enough Veterans out there now in my age group that we should really start finding ways to link up besides randomly showing up at a group because I know I myself don't have the balls/gumption to go group meetings or the where-with-all (sp?) to even leave the house. I don't know where this is going so I'm going to end it here lol. Damn PTSD, at least I was focused for 30 minutes.

I was 11Bravo... I remember the battlefield too. I understand where you are coming from.Hambone11B'.

Thanks for your post. I appreciate your thoughts.. Hang in there Brother. You are not alone.

Later,

Bob

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Jon-

thanks for the reminder. Harbor Freight has all kinds of cool stuff that doesn't cost too much. And since I like projects, I'll check it out some more.

Medic-

I kinda got away from the Success Stories (that's about all I read at first on hadit) but going there mostly is a good idea.

Hambone11B-

I don't share the same background with regards to war (other than I do know that being in everyday life is a far less "awake" feeling for me than, say, working the flight deck on the carrier was all those years ago. (I am about twice your age) But I would say you have a lot of ideas. Some are probably really good. You should keep track of them, write stuff down, review it once in a while for inspiration. I do that part too, my mind races, I cover a lot of ideas, then the next day I don't remember them unless I keep notes. Don't give up. Try to get out some, at least for short trips. It helps.

Commander Bob-

No, it's not a damper. I know that a lot of this will not change even if there is some financial relief. Every day is a new day, and we have to figure out what to do with it. At my best, I try to stir things up, try to do unexpected things once in a while, otherwise I also fall into routines like waiting for the mail to come... even if it's hours away. It makes sense to me at the time, but isn't really good for me. And, yeah... sleep. I tend to wander around at night till a lot of hours have passed and it's the wee hours of the morning.

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