Is a cochlear implant a possibility for you? It would broaden your employment options.
In the USA I have to pay 42k for that, the insurance companies here do not cover it (in contrast with UK and Canada). There's something better coming in the distant future (which probably will cost me more), it's called: hearing cells regeneration (still on trial at Columbia and John Hopkins universities).
Anyway, I am thinking lately that maybe I can do both working hard and writing. I just have to get rid of my MA thesis, since writing a thesis sometimes might be more difficult than writing a novel or a play. In the first case you need to read a lot, write, get feedback from your adviser, delete and rewrite; in the second case you write and delete a lot, but you don't need too much time for doing supervised research.
Let's see how my writing will go, after I finish my MA program. Maybe some people here are right in saying that you can do both, work and write simultaneously. If things will move slowly again (as it is happening with my MA thesis on Kant which is taking almost a year), then I will seriously search another job, with the hope of being more productive in a language/country that gives no money to writers.