It is what it is.

I have to admit that my absolutely entire understanding of life has been wrong up until now. And as I've said before, I'm not ashamed to admit that fact. Little, or rather almost none, of the things which caused it were under my influence.
I was raised by very conservative and strict people whose beliefs are unchanging to the point of stubbornness and stupidity. People who do not accept an opinion different from their own. And even worse - this opinion of theirs was formed in a small region with small settlements, contacting the same unchanging people day after day, year after year. There are no challenges, no shakes, no change, nothing special.
In general, their reality could not be applied almost anywhere nowadays. But I was foolish enough to succumb to the compulsion to believe it was real and relevant. Until today. Or rather, until a few days or weeks ago.

One of the things I was led to believe was, as I told you, that life runs in a straight line, there is a prescribed path with corner stones that everyone follows, everyone's life unfolds in the same, predictable and tested way, and if something does not happen in this way, then the fault lies solely with you, because you were not smart enough, intelligent and able to follow and copy this predetermined path one to one and without deviations.

The other thing that directly or indirectly also stems from this delusion is that the world is evolving and that is the only direction it is moving.

The world is changing, that's for sure. If we look back just 5 or 10 years, and remember how we used to live then, we will see a huge difference. All these technologies, to say the least. This gives a deceptive sense of progress, reporting just one change. Because if we take the quality of life and the lifestyle of the people, the level of some satisfaction, increase in income even, access to good work and good working conditions, we will hardly see any development.
Because change in the world never happens with the welfare of the population in mind. On the contrary, the population, to one degree or another, depending on which continent or country it is in, has historically always been oppressed, there have always been excessive taxes, inadequate political decisions that benefit certain people or circles, corruption. No one cares about the individual's inability to survive.

To illustrate this statement of mine, I will present the following evidence: what happened after the New Year with regard to me.
All this happened in just one month and it would have been very hard to bear if I hadn't changed my perspective.

So, being unemployed, I have to pay for my own health insurance. The state doesn't care that I can't find a job, I have to find this money for health insurance. To possibly pay less later than what I would otherwise pay if I wasn't self-insured to get the anyway low-quality health care that one usually gets in Bulgaria.

Anyway, this has always been the case, no point in complaining, but the change this year came with the fact that when I go to pay my insurance at the bank, I have to pay a transfer fee. A fine for transferring money to the budget. And most of all a fine for being unemployed, because if I worked as expected of me in this part of Bulgaria for minimum wage and in some low-qualified position, I wouldn't have to pay this amount myself to the bank and pay this fine. Which is not small, by the way. It is 1.5 euros for each transfer to the budget scheduled to take place every month.

A few days later I found out that the bank where I have an account raised the monthly "maintenance" fee by almost 100% because there are no regular payments on my account, ie. salary. A new fine because I am unemployed. In short, the unemployed are penalized into paying higher fees.

A few days earlier, my mobile operator sent me a congratulatory text saying they were raising my charge by 4.7%, adjusted for last year's inflation. Mobile operators have been doing this for several years now. The ombudsman's opinion that this is illegal is irrelevant, the parliament refuses to intervene because these companies would be clearly politicized, etc. etc. nonsense...

During my visit to the dentist, I had to pay only for the one very simple and routine procedure 25 euros. I mean, to pay extra for it, because the law says that when you have health insurance, you are entitled to three free dental procedures a year.
Enough with the "insurance". These procedures at the dentist are never free anyway, but I can safely say that this year the price for exactly this is 25 euros higher, because for the same procedure last year my partner did not pay anything extra.
Also, to pay this further increase I had to have cash, very few places accept card here anyway. And to withdraw money from an ATM, I pay a penalty fee, a fine for wanting to have cash in a country where you often can't buy anything or pay for a service with a card.
An absolute oxymoron.

So I'm penalized for not being able to get a job, and even if I had a job, do you think the employer would index wages to at least inflation rate every year like the phone companies have been doing for years, or like they do with all goods and services anyway? It's hard to even think about. Simply because it doesn't happen.

But what's going on in the job market at the same time?
As I told you before, in order to work in the neighboring city, I will have to put up with minimum wage, low-skilled labor, and not only that - I will have to beg people I know, look for connections to be assigned somewhere, as I found out things happening here. On the other hand, the number and type of remote positions dropped sharply. Even customer support positions with night shifts or weekend shifts have to be on-site or at best - hybrid, which is ridiculous for this type of work.
The rest of the positions that are left remote are pretty low paying, which continues to drop gradually, as I said, the choices for them are limited anyway.
Often similar and other positions are for a civil contract, they cannot even reach the level of an offer for an employment contract, because the employer does not want to pay insurance anymore. (Is this called development?) The employer also now wants to hire trained people who do not need any induction training. They also want to consolidate several positions into one and hire freelancers to perform work that has all the characteristics of a position requiring an employment contract. Just two days ago, I read such an ad, where a copywriter and a designer were wanted in one, something that specialists who deal with these activities commented that it is not possible to combine these two activities in one person. Etc. Etc.

At the same time, the news reports that employers in Bulgaria lack qualified labor, so they have already reached out to look for people outside the country.
And I wonder which foreigner will like a salary of 370 euros, which is the minimum wage in Bulgaria, or 397, or 476 or something similar, because Bulgaria is not Venezuela with a low standard of living. You can't live on that money here. At least not with dignity.
Most recently, a government delegation returned from a visit to Vietnam where they signed a labor support agreement.
I don't know if the Vietnamese will be happy and satisfied with such a proposal. I hope they are. But why didn't the state first create working conditions for its own people?

Well, I don't ask myself such questions anymore. Simply because I know that life is not arranged in this linear and logical way that I thought before.
And no, I'm not complaining anymore. Yes, it's hard for me, but who has it easy?
I always think of a woman they interviewed in a town not far from here. Water is most expensive there in the whole country, on the other hand it is poisonous and unusable for households. At the last price increase, she had said: If it goes on like this, we will have to end our lives, what else can we do?

But will this help anything?

I also think of that young man more than 10 years ago who set himself on fire in front of the municipality building in one of the largest cities in the country, as a sign of protest against the government, "the poverty, corruption and exorbitant electricity bills".
The man just died and that death didn't lower the electricity bills, it didn't change anything.
So I just muster the strength to accept the present. There is nothing else I can do at the moment.
It is what it is. I have to put up with it.

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The photos I have used this time of this surreal, abandoned old building in the center of my favorite Black Sea city, Burgas, I think illustrate the post very well.

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|