A matter of perspective.

Big day, yesterday. Submitted an application for a job and started Uni. My transformation has begun!

Three years seems so long (still 2 years and 10 months to go!!!) but I don’t really feel all that restricted by my bankruptcy. I feel the release from debt more powerfully than I do the loss of my assets. I didn’t really own anything anyway. Stripping my life back to the bare essentials has been cleansing and liberating. I often try to imagine how this would feel for someone falling from a much more exalted position. Imagine if I had a child or an executive position, if I had lost my home and had to move my family, imagine if my kids had to change schools. There is a great deal of social pressure to maintain a prescribed lifestyle and it would be very hard to do that on a net salary of $44k.

Ironically, I fall so far outside the eligible criteria for the mainstream definition of success, I am consequently free from the tyranny of comparison. I am a single woman nearing 40 without children and, where there is no hope, there is also no expectation - so I can do whatever I damn well please! I can buy my clothes from Op Shops, I can live on vegemite toast, I can use a bicycle as a primary means of transport and I can live with my parents. None of that seems particularly outrageous for a person in my situation.

Becoming a student again is invigorating (and by happy coincidence authenticates my tree-hugging, anti-consumerist disguise); the classroom is a place where ideas are currency and money is a secondary consideration to the creative process.

If only the real world was more like that!

I'd recommend returning to study for any bankrupt, especially if you can get Commonwealth Assistance. It's such a great opportunity to expand your social and professional network, increase your skills and just break your current mindset by doing something constructive and positive. And, the best part, I'm completing my course part-time over a three year period and this somehow makes me feel less overwhelmed by my bankruptcy term. I can persuade myself that my bankruptcy is less of a setback and more an opportunity to stop and garner more inspiration and knowledge for the next stage in my career.

See? It really is all about perspective.