Journal entry: Day 18 of 30

As I sit in the cockpit of my old rusted mining ship, deep inside a local asteroid belt all I can hear is the hum of the lasers as they blast away at ore. I do this for sixteen hours a day, knowing that one day my ship is not going to start up. This will be the day my family dies. What little money I make has to go towards keeping my hangar/home mine. With my wife who never had a chance to go to school and my daughter who we can’t afford to send to school. My wife has to work at the food plaza in our station just to be able to put food on the table for our daughter. Before leaving the station I check the asteroid status broadcaster from the stations industry division. Some days I decide not to eat if I know its not going to be a good day on the belts so that my family can eat. No ore means no food. It just all depends on who gets out to the belts first. With the larger corporations being able to mine around the clock, the rest of us get what is left over that they don’t take. What little is left over for us is a constant battle with the pirates and outlaws to get as much as we can. Their constant skirmish style attacks on solo miners makes it seem as though every day you head off to a belt could be your last. This is the reason why most of us do not go out alone. However, to ensure that my family has a place to live that is safe, I must risk it. I personally have not had any issue with pirates since my scout drones came in last month. Buying them took a toll on my family though. I had to go a couple days every week without eating. But I knew in the long run it would pay off, sure enough it did. I can mine farther away from the station I live in. This means I can get to the ore that the corporations could not haul back, that other solo miners and smaller vessels can not reach. That being said, this month is proving to be a little, not a lot, but a little better than the last. I have only twelve days left till I have to pay my station and pilot fee of seven hundred million Isk to keep a roof over my families head. I am just barely half way there and I am already doing the math to find out how many hours a day I need. In order to make my mark, sixteen hour days are about to turn into nineteen hour days, from undocking to docking. My family already misses me enough as it is. I can not keep living like this though. Something needs to change. I’m going to talk to my boss at the end of the month to see if I can upgrade into one of the newer and larger mining ships. I have already proved that I have that I have all the necessary skills to pilot one effectively. This would mean I would have some jingle in my pocket going to and from work. I could start a payment plan to send my daughter to school down on one of the local planet academies. I can buy my wife nicer clothes and some jewelry, maybe even save up for a better place. But these are all wishes and wishing never got me anywhere in life.Only hard work and rock hard determination proves to move me forward. Till then I just have to sit and wait till the mining cycle is over. Another eight-three minutes cycles till full capacity. If my boss doesn’t upgrade me soon, I don’t know what I will do. I think I might have to take matters into my own hands.

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