In reading this post, it has reminded me of a TV show I saw.....There were several people working in a department. The leader of the department was a smoker & so was another person. Another person wanted to be an active part of the department, but she didn't smoke & was allergic to smoke. She realized that several decisions that effected the whole department were made by the 2 people that were the smokers on their smoke break. The other person that wanted to be a part of the decision making process decided that even though she didn't smoke & was allergic to smoke that she needed to smoke just to be a decision making part of the department. She joined in on the smoking & ended up very ill, just trying hard to be in on what was going on with the smokers.

No matter how I look at this from what has been written so far, I will never be a part of the monitary contribution part being that I can barely get by from 1 months disability check to another since my Med costs are higher than my income.....nothing can change that.

As far as contributing in writing, if that is the determining issue, I will never become a part of that either. After the writing experience I had when I was an aerospace engineer, I feel horrible about my writing. I was REQUIRED by my department to write a proposal for a subject that was to be presented at a national symposium. I took all the books I could & put together all the buzz words & what do you know they accepted my proposal to be presented nationally......I only knew the buzz words & sounded like I knew what I was talking about, but in reality, I didn't know one thing about the subject except how to BS my way with my writing. Yes, I was good at putting words together, but knowing about what I was writing about was another thing completely. From then on, I refuse to write about anything that I don't really know about......even for any amount of recognition.

Guess in this case, 2 strikes & I'm out of this new forum also. But that is the way my life has gone mostly anyway.....I too am like that 3rd person in the department, only I don't choose to do something I don't feel comfortable doing......thus leaving me out of many things that I either can't do or feel uncomfortable doing.

So goes life,
Debbie