So life goes on. At least I am trying to pretend that is what is going on with me. The fact is however that my life is not much of a life since the fact is that my money issues drag along with me for now and I am sure it is going to drag along with me once I have paid all my debt down (moving is expensive as was the case for me 1 year ago). The problem is the crazy economic policies in Iceland, currently the exchange rate for Icelandic krona (ISK) is 21,98 against DKK (Danish krona). That means I am paying 22,73 ISK for 1 DKK (at Visa exchange rate) and that is not making my life easy. It has also been unofficial policy in Iceland to keep the disabled and people with issues (like having an Asperger’s syndrome that makes it really hard to me to get a regular job that pays decently) at poverty levels. That is no surprise since it comes from a dark history in Iceland that took place mostly before the year 1970. Back then it was custom to keep poor people poor by economic means or by force if nothing else worked.
Kids of poor people where sent to other farms to work (this took place mostly before the 1900, but it did last something towards to 1940 – 1960ish. I am not sure how long), disabled people where forced to live on farms and if nothing else the state paid the farmer who hosted the people an minimal amount to take care of them. But for most part, poor people and often disabled people where slaves in Iceland (before 1900). The laws that require people to hire them to an farm and work there have de-facto never been removed from Icelandic laws to this day.
What this to do with my money problems and issues. The Icelandic culture (you are never going to get many Icelanders to admit this) retains many of this old view on disabled people, the view that people disability is somehow there own fault and they should just accept what they are given from Icelandic state. Even if it is so low amount that there is no possibility to survive off this amount. This is done intentionally and here is a good example of this. Way back in the year 2004 when I started to live on my own I just got around 89.000 ISK (541,26€ on today exchange rate, at the exchange rate of the year 2004 it was just 1016,21€. Today that is 964,54€ or 158.600 ISK, in euro my income has not increased at all) as an disability welfare from Icelandic state. It was not until 2006 – 2007 that welfare got up to barley liveable levels and then in the year 2008 the economic collapse came and my income did go straight to hell in terms of how much I have to pay the bills and such things. The reason I moved to Denmark (to start with. My plan is to move to Austria when I can, not sure when that is going to happen. I want mountains and earthquakes since I cannot move to Azores Islands for several reasons) is to avoid this issue, since I am sure that Icelandic economy is going to collapse again soon in few years time.
I am stuck in a trap, the trap is normally called poverty trap [see also Poverty]. So far my attempts to break out if have turned out to be fruitless. I am not going to try and give up on this since this is my only change to change my life. But at the moment it is not going so well. I have low income of this blog due to low traffic (no eruption or earthquakes taking place in Iceland or Europe at the moment) at the moment. I am sure my income is going to increase temporary in terms or advertisement income when next eruption takes place.
Until that happens I have to count on support from my regular readers. Since without that support I am not sure I can do this job. Since it is a lot of work to keep track on what earthquake swarms and volcano are doing on daily basis. My work schedule is most hours of during the week, even when I take a break from writing on this blog once in a while. My other work can be found here below, since it is a links to my other websites.
Jón Frímann bloggar (Icelandic, English, Danish (soon), German (soon))
Jarðfræði bloggið (Icelandic version of this blog)
Canary Island geology blog (Canary Island geology blog)
Europe geology blog (Earthquakes and volcano activity in Europe)
Spacewatch (blog about Space related matters)
Falkland Islands blog (All about Falkland Islands. Work in progress)
Jón Universe (My fictional short stories. Updated regularly)
Information on how to support me can be found here. I have written all the instruction on how to send me a donation there as clearly as I can. Thanks for the support!