Inside the system

I have to admit that during law school, my least favorite classes were those that had anything to do with money. I am not business-minded (obviously) and have a strong aversion to all things corporate. So this bankruptcy business is...in a word...awful. But having filed the initial paperwork and navigated my way through the local rules of procedure, I'm thinking, after all this, that I might change my career path to become a pro bono bankruptcy attorney...or some kind of lobbyist for bankruptcy reform...in my spare time. The fact is, there is NO way your average Joe could navigate this nightmare of forms and numbers and procedures and blah blah blah. And really...do we need to overburden people in financial trouble with the added costs of attorneys and insane filing fees? It makes no sense unless you adopt a punitive approach to bankruptcy theory (and I will respectfully leave out my political diatribe here; save for to say that I think that, at some level, punishment is exactly what is going on in our bankruptcy system).

I'm sure there are a lot of people who think, "Hey, you did this to yourself...deal with it." And there is some part of that that is accurate. I fully accept my part in this and the bad decisions I made to get myself here. But I don't really need, in addition to all the other crap I'm dealing with, to be mentally, emotionally and financially flogged by a system that is supposed to help. I will gladly do what I need to do...but it doesn't need to be set up to be so difficult that it is virtually impossible.

They say change comes from within.

I wonder what kind of change I can create in this...