I'm getting help: underearning.

[manuel_moe_g]

But what if I doubt, and therefore don't go, because I learned from this experience that I will only experience more hurt when I am ostensibly seeking healing?

There is another logically possible reading. The meeting existed on the calendar, and several people needed the meeting, but you were the only one with guts to actually go out and brave triggers.

That means, among the group of humans that saw the meeting on the calendar and recognized the need, you distinguished yourself as the person who will move on the fastest, by force of will demonstrated on this night of rainy driving without cell-phone service. You will move on the fastest to the next level of human effectiveness.

You will backslide - all people who are brave enough to break unproductive patterns of behavior will have episodes of backsliding. But it will be 2 steps forward for every 1 step back, as per the unbreakable law of people who manifest guts. And you will have moved onto the next level of human effectiveness, full speed ahead.

This reading is fully logically valid. Sure, it is the optimistic reading, but why not? A demonstration of guts warrants an optimistic reading, surely.

I hella proud of you. I am proud enough of you for the both of us. I hope you come over to my way of thinking. You deserve it.

[oak]

Thanks so much Manuel Moe for your profound post. You can be assured it comforted me.

In your honor, I give you:

An Act of Financial Faith

Part of getting help for underearning is using the tools, and living abundantly. While I do neither of those anywhere near perfectly, I want to do better.

I somehow saw that Mr. David Sedaris is coming to my city in a few days, just long enough for me to invite a lovely woman to go see him.

Remembering one of the tools is the envelope system, I resolved to put $20, enough for two of the least-expensive tickets, into an envelope.

While other people laudably do great acts of faith, a big act of faith for me was to get up, find an envelope, and write "David Sedaris" on it. I couldn't find any envelopes in the house, since no one writes letters anymore. I found a piece of scrap paper, folded around the $20 bill, and paper clipped it. It would have to do, faith-wise, as a substitute.

Since I was feeling bold in faith, I decided that religious people shouldn't have all the fun praying, so I sent happy vibes asking My Higher Self or the Universe to help me find a date. Or if not to help me, at least not to hinder me. So, asking the Universe to stay out of my way is the closest I can come to "praying".

I also decide that if it is not meant to be, I accept the Universe's will. If it was not meant to be, then I'll give the $20 to a worthy person, perhaps even Mr. Paul Gilmartin's fine efforts!

I also asked the Universe for this asked for woman to be a dishwater blond, but that I would accept any worthy woman. This is what passes for an act of faith for me, sad to say. I am such a loser.

I ran through in my head several acquaintances I know who could conceivably be interested in going.

Since part of facing my underearning is planning ahead, I checked the venue for available seats. Entering for two $10 tickets, it came back at $90 since the inexpensive tickets were sold out, to which I was all like "Fuck this shit". (Although I do celebrate the venue's right to charge whatever they want. I believe artists should get paid.)

Here is where I use an "I feel/when you/because" statement:

I felt hurt and sad when the venue was out of $10 David Sedaris tickets because the idea of going gave me hope that I could demonstrate faith in abundance through action.

On a scale of 1 to 10, the disappointment I felt was a 6. Though the following will make sense only to me, my disappointment was the color of Lake Erie on an overcast, dreary and slightly stormy afternoon this time of year: green and grayish, but indifferently green and grayish. Harsh.

Scrolling down the website's events page, I saw that the venue is having "Cabaret" in two weeks. While musicals are sorta out of my wheelhouse, I like to expand my musical horizons. Maybe I'll start inviting a woman out to that.

In the meantime, I am still sad.

I'd like to meet the people who told me, when I was growing up, that men don't feel emotions. That's a fucking lie, and I'd them that right to their faces.

I tried to take action, to demonstrate faith, and got hurt again. Like my faith mocks me. Maybe it would've been better not to have faith, or to take action: at least I wouldn't feel like this now.

[manuel_moe_g]

I tried to take action, to demonstrate faith, and got hurt again. Like my faith mocks me. Maybe it would've been better not to have faith, or to take action: at least I wouldn't feel like this now.

Sometimes when faith dies, it is a healthy thing. The battered woman has faith that her man will someday treat her better. The compulsive gambler has faith that the next roll of the dice will restore his fortunes.

I am currently fighting a battle with my old egoistic vision of success. It is a worldly form of success. There is another form of success consistent with my level of depression and anxiety - one where I measure success not by the world's yardstick, but by an internal yardstick and mainly based on my compassionate availability to people who are suffering or who want to rise to the next level of accomplishment and fulfillment. It is hard as hell because the ego is so good at seduction.

When I had "faith" that something was going to turn my life around to such a degree that everyone who doubted be would be humiliated by my success, then I was closest to suicide. That kind of "faith" was deadly to me.

I don't know if what I am saying even makes sense, I am kind of tired right now. I don't want to bully you with my own interpretation because you are the expert on your situation and you are the expert on your life's definition of success and accomplishment and fulfillment. But it pains me to have you put your faith in parts of the universe that you have little control over, when you have a form of success shining so bright I don't know how you avoid blinding yourself in the mirror - you have the guts to give yourself over to a very rigorous program of self-improvement. Your display of guts is its own reward, and the universe cannot discount these.

I am a goddamned windbag. I hope I didn't insult you or insult your intelligence. No matter what you decide, we here are standing behind you cheering you on! You rock! All the best, cheers!

[oak]

Manuel Moe hello and thanks so much for your thoughtful reply.

You only did not insult me, you offered well-appreciated words of comfort. Thanks for being willing to be vulnerable.

The word in your response that leapt out to me was "yardstick". Around the time I posted that I flipped by "Two and a Half Men" and the World Series, both of which portray a very specific image of manhood, both of which I am NOT ENOUGH.

Both Charlie Sheen and baseball players have good qualities that I can learn from. On the other hand, both are "playing": Charlie Sheen is playing a character, and the baseball players are hitting a ball with a piece of wood. Both of which are fine activities to play, I guess.

Slickly packaged, they appear much the bigger, better men than me. What media is increasingly demonstrating is that such gods have feet of clay.

But a lonely, sad me can't always realize that in the moment. Yardsticks: they obscure and shame,

I also realized that the David Sedaris effort was objectively no big deal. What is a big deal is my emotions. Underearning has been wonderful in bringing up the good and bad that I can/should confront.

What's in the way is the way, as they say.

Thanks also, Manuel Moe, for your kind words about "rigorous self improvement". Along with the issue I've pm'ed you about, tomorrow I am going to try the last support group in my area. I will have a hundred reasons not to go, but one good reason to go. Tomorrow will be a long, exhausting day even before the meeting, and I will be super duper "tired", emotionally if not physically.

(btw, this meeting is for a support group that directly addresses issues of debting and underearning.)

Since the debacle of the last meeting I went to, I put my old but sem-trusty gps in my car. Also, I should have fine phone coverage, since this meeting is in the suburbs.

Active underearning was painful, a dull aching pain. Addressing underearning, taking action, is a series of sharp, stabbing emotional pains.

I am living better, but I am not sure it is worth the pain.

[manuel_moe_g]

Active underearning was painful, a dull aching pain. Addressing underearning, taking action, is a series of sharp, stabbing emotional pains.

I am living better, but I am not sure it is worth the pain.

I know what you mean. That was what I overshared in the live Aisha Tyler episode.

Where I am trying to get to is the place where living better is its own reward, and the relative status hardly matters.

Please take care, you deserve the gifts you are giving yourself through this process!

[oak]

Brief updates

1. I am not currently getting any formal help for underearning. I do hope to try the other Debtors Anonymous meeting in my geographic area this month.

2. In my daily life I am able to observe people doing the very same things I did throughout my Bad Old Days. I see people unwisely using unsecured debt (me circa 2006), people trying to get into working poverty (me circa 2009), and people painfully trying to escape working poverty (me, April 2012 to the present).

This last group, escaping working poverty, is the most painful in my experience. People abusing unsecured debt still have that confidence in The Big Fix, that they have A Plan.

3. That being said, I realized how fleeting escaping working poverty is.

I have short term health insurance now. One flimsy plastic card in my pocket can be the difference between life saving health care, and having to tough it out on my own. That is: me with health insurance, come on in. Me without health insurance: go fuck yourself.

Chilling.

Edit: Lest I seem arrogant or removed from those in the throes of underearning: I still struggle with underearning, and realize that working poverty, under- and unemployment, and even homelessness are still very real possibilities in my future.

I am grateful, humbly so I hope, for what I have today.

[oak]

If I may indulge myself, I thought I'd offer a few thoughts/perspectives on my experience of underearning, a few months in. Lessons I've learned. I speak only for myself and my own experience.

For about six months I've had good contingent work. Contingent on people many levels above me, who have found my skills in line with their needs (and their budgets). I am grateful to them.

Last night I had a dream:

Me and my friends were all together. We were being welcomed and celebrated. None of us knew why we were being celebrated, but the people in the big hall smiled and offered us endless food.

Suddenly, without knowing why, we had to leave immediately, to run. I didn't know who or what was pursuing us, but we had to scatter, now, and make our way individually. We had violated, unwittingly, a moral or social law, not legal ones. Still, we had to run.

I scrambled and dodged and survived. Harried, being pursued by force/entity that didn't have a body but was very real, I stumbled into a large kitchen. Told to leave, a kind cook took the chance to tell me where I might find live-in work. While still in the kitchen I looked longingly at a half-eaten, forgotten piece of bread.

I ran outside into a Disney-imagined paradise, full of sunshine, green grass, and beautiful buildings. I was ashamed to be seen, but happy children drifted towards me.

The end of my dream

Another reverie

Yesterday I lost myself in thought for a moment: I was looking out the window of a restaurant. I was satisfied to know that I had a fine lunch and was going back in a few minutes to a job where I would be paid well, affirmed, and contributing to an effort that was larger than myself.

Less than a year ago I was grateful to be working a third shift temp job, Sunday night through Friday morning, where we would all be routinely yelled at. I am still grateful for that job, and would be willing to do it starting right this minute if I had to.

So much for my musings

I offer the following lessons, what I took away from unemployment (which is the close friend of underearning), to offer hope to others but also to write down disparate ideas swimming around my head.

These ideas may be wrong, contradictory, and politically incorrect. I may offend a conservative one moment and offend a liberal the next. I offer this humbly, and only as my own experience.

Ideas/Thoughts

1. There are macro, large scale factors that thwarted and slowed down my efforts to escape underearning.

2. I am not healed or cured of underearning. LIke any life-threatening difficulty it is now quiet, now screaming, but always waiting. Waiting.

3. The difference between the person who succeeds and the person who fails may be ten minutes a day of different behaviors, attitudes, and actions.

4. The key to me finding employment was:

a. Determining what skills I had to offer a prospective employer.

b. Finding an employer with "pain", ie an employer with an urgent need that could only be filled by a person with the skill(s) I possessed. (Idea/concept from job search books)

c. Getting in front of this employer.

d. Having this employer "like the look of this guy's face" and hire me. (Being likeable, so that I would get hired rather than the other two finalists, who were equally qualified)

5. In other words, increasing my skills and likability and increasing the number of people I got in front of, until someone took a chance on me.

6. Successes not only keep trying, but they keep trying different things until something works.

7. Sometimes things simply won't go right... until they start going right.


There is more I could say, but I'll leave it there.

I am very grateful.

[Mentalart]

This was an amazing thread for me to read. I have been unemployed for the last five months and have struggled with finding the motivation and courage to move forward. Reading Oak's posts reminded me of how much I do have and can use to get myself and my wife to a more secure spot. Thank you so much for all the knowledge and wisdom and I hope things keep getting better for you.

[oak]

Thanks Mentalart. I am humbled by your words. You will find meaningful work soon. Keep me posted.

(Long post)

An update

About life on the other side.

Caveat: I am not healed of underearning, and it could come back anytime. I am not rich, and am making just a few dollars over minimum wage. I certainly don't want to brag; I am humble. I am humbled by the awesome, terrible power of underearning.

That being said, if I may offer a little hope, describing what life is like now.

I'll use yesterday and today as an example.

Yesterday at work a coworker mentioned that he was accepting donations for his daughter as she participated in a danceathon for charity. My conscience kept telling me to give him $5. My conscience wouldn't let me alone, so I gave it to him. Everyone was happy.

Yesterday I went to lunch with a single mom. She could afford her lunch, but I wanted to pay for the following reason:

In 2010 I was working retail, taking every hour they'd give me. Still, I could average only 5.5 days of food a week, no matter where or what I cut out. One day an acquaintance invited me to his church. He suggested lunch afterwards, and I vividly remember everything about his meal at Arby's, since I had nothing to eat. He ate in front of me, leisurely.

I remember another time, in 2008, when I was actively underearning (ie bad inflow and foolish outflow). In Missouri, an acquaintance ate McDonalds in front of me, when I again had nothing.

Neither did so with malice. But I never want to eat in front of someone who doesn't have enough. Even if I am taken advantage of now and then, I want to spread the wealth.

I had to chuckle to myself yesterday when I remembered that: right this instant I can go buy anything I want on Arbys menu. Anything. In fact, I could probably buy the entire menu right this instant: after planning my spending for the week, I have exactly $65.87 in the bank.

While that amount of savings would make some people panic, I am grateful for it. Just this time last year, to me $20 was an unimaginable fortune.

My main expenses are car insurance, rent, and smartphone. I am on good terms with each of those providers, very unmuch like last year.

I hope I am not becoming a jerk. Forgetting what it was like. viz:

Ten days ago I wanted Mexican food after work one Thursday. Between a pop and the tip, my dinner was $15. I thought to myself "Huh. That dinner was okay."

As if $15 was nothing.

I instantly realized that many, many weeks between 2009 and 2012, $15 would have been all that I'd have to eat on for an entire week. Probably 75% of the time. Another 20% of the time I'd have $10 for food for an entire week.

To get back to what life is like now:

I like to keep a roll of quarters in my car, in case I ever need it for parking meters. In the bad old days I'd hope that I'd not get ticketed. You can imagine how that ended: I vividly remember watching my car get towed away in 2008. Ugh.

This time last year I vividly remember depositing nickels and dimes I'd find around the house. I'd deposit $1.87 one day, 53 cents the next day. To their credit the bank tellers reduced the shame I expressed: they had done the same thing, they told. Maybe I am not terminally unique in underearning.

What I like to do now and then is ask myself: What if I were homeless right now? How long could I survive. What if Hurricaine Katrina or Sandy came through again? What I had my car, the clothes on my back, my phone, debit card, and laptop. Assuming I could get gas and a motel, how far could I get? How long would my money last me? If I had the need to drive a thousand miles in two days, could I do it?

Like I said, my expenses are modest: food, rent, no-contract smartphone, and car insurance. (btw, I drove for years without car insurance. I am ashamed to type that.)

I don't spend money on clothes (although I look respectable), movies, coffee, alcohol or drugs, childcare, medical (although I am seeking health insurance).

The one experience I've fucking loved all throughout the bad days: reading the New York Times while eating at a restaurant. Another man can have a fancy house, expensive car, all that.

I won't trade it for eating out and reading a newspaper.

Now I have the freedom to eat out every day and buy a Sunday Times everyweek ($6!). But since I *can* do it, I don't *need* to. You know?

I am very cognizant of the finely-judged view of class in America. There are two things I couldn't afford when working poor that I am weighing: health insurance and internet access.

In the bad old days my health care was... hope. Hope I didn't get sick, and if I did, hope it went away.

I also had a dumb phone, with it turned on about 60% of the time.

Now I realize that health insurance is one of the things that separates the haves from the have-nots. Also, the digital divide is the real deal. A cellphone (or at the very least Google Voice ie voicemail) is de facto neccessary. And when looking for a job, a person with a smartphone is at a great advantage to the person with a dumb phone, since a smartphone can answer emails and use the GPS to get to an interview.

My ideal is to have a white collar job ten months a year. Then I want to work six weeks a year in retail or a restaurant. I never want to forget what it is like to be a humble, hard worker.

In fact, my times I've thought that I'd gladly be a dishwasher the rest of my life, satisfied, if I could make a living wage.

Paraphrasing, Christopher Hitchens mother said that if there must be a middle class, her son may as well be in it.

That is how I feel, much as I hate- hate- that there are haves and have nots.

I hope to bring some people up with me.

I hope I don't forget what underearning is like. I hope I am never entitled. That thought terrifies me.

At the same time I am equally terrified of wallowing in underearning if I have the means to escape it.

I am humbled by this underearning experience. I am grateful for the help I have received by kind loved ones and strangers. I am grateful I had the chance to learn how to work hard, yes: bootstraps. But without the help from others I would have committed suicide in 1999, 2006, or 2012 before I could have pulled myself up by said bootstraps.

One final memory I cherish:

In the summer of 2008 the Wheels Fell Off. I mean really. It was horrible. Kind friends invited me to sleep on their couch. Stray cats came and went so there were fleas on me at all times. The heat got turned off, and the shower clogged, so I'd have to take a cold shower in six inches of water. It was a nightmare living situation, but really good considering that I had no other resources or place to go. And they were so very kind to me. We didn't have enough to eat, and many times they'd share the last of their food with me.

Through a chance email, I applied, interviewed, and was offered a live-in position for troubled young people. (It was actually a student organization, but some of the stories I could tell you...)

So there I am in the late summer of 2008: a checkered working history, no money, no privacy, fleas.

I arrive at the house and realize that the residents had stolen keys left out for me. (I later learned they stole the window air conditioner. It would be that kind of year.)

The cook was kind enough to run keys out to me, and change the locks. (While she helped me alot in the coming months, I came to realize she was in collusion with the food vendors to embezzle money from my employers. I only figured this out after she died of brain cancer six months later. Again, that kind of experience.)

I vividly remember walking into my new living quarters. I had a living room with couch, a hallway with a closet, bathroom, and bedroom. I could lock the door behind me, and thankfully I didn't bring any fleas with me.

And the bathroom! I'd be the only person using it, and it had one of those 1960's vintage shower heads. Water inefficient but all the glorious hot water cascading over me as much as I wanted. I could hardly believe.

Then I went into the kitchen and unlocked the industrial sized refrigerators.

(Before I get to what I saw in the refrigerators, let me relate this story, the type of which would happen every single day: The residents did not have keys to the fridge, so they would pry the lock open with a knife. One afternoon I walked into the kitchen and saw one of the residents in the act of trying to pry the fridge open. When I asked him what he was doing, he got angry at me. These are the very same people who had money for alcohol and ordering delivery food any day of the week (even though the takeout places were an easy five minute walk each way). Many many times the bewildered delivery person would pound on the front door, looking for the person to deliver it to. But the resident would be so drunk they'd forget they ordered the food, and too blacked out to hear their phone ringing. This was my life, daily.)

So I open the refrigerator door and I see 16 gallons of milk and many pounds of salami. My first meal of salami with banana peppers and all the milk I wanted was blissful.

The lesson?

It gets better.

Even when things are bad, there can still be good moments.

But if we work hard and keep the faith and don't give up, it gets better.

[oak]

An update.

A more accurate title for this thread could have been "I'm unemployed! I gotta figure something out!" It turns out I did figure it out, with some help and a little luck. And lots of shoe leather (the fabled "bootstraps").

Some friends here on this forum gave me much to think about, regarding the identity of "underearning".

Taking a hard look at my behavior, I see that language can obscure as much as it can reveal.

In other words, "underearning" is a convenient shorthand way to desribe a general experience I've had for nearly ten years.

But!

There is no objective, tangible reality in the universe called "underearning". There is a tangible, actual me. Ergo, "underearning" needs me, but I don't need underearning. Ergo, I am more important than an identity.

And today I realize that there are macro forces that kept me underearning. Namely, since I have done everything asked of me by every employer since September 2008 I believe I deserve a living wage. Macro realities.

But for years it did help to have a label.

Like the word-ideas "cancer" or "America", "underearning" is a complex galaxy of shifting realities. To wit:

From 2006 to March 31, 2008 I was an ineffective employee. Since then I have been described as industrious, humble, and I strive to spend time on task.

From Jan 2006 to March 2008 I was actively debting: ie incurring a bunch of unsecured debt I had no plan to repay in a timely matter. Since 2008 I have lived within my means.

What I *think* underearning is, for me, is wasting time. For years I misspent my time in libraries and playing video games. Now reading and video games are excellent ways to spend time! Unless, like me, one does it too much!

So that is how I see it today: I've actively made certain decisions, influenced by macro realities, that have put me in a specific situation.

The main thing I've lost is a naive belief that if I work hard, I'll be taken care of. Hard work is of course great, but I want to be savvy about my hard work.

The job search world measures something, but I've come to believe it does not measure job fitness. The job search is a game: an odd, ineffective game that destroys people. But just because I view it as a game doesn't mean that I shouldn't try to play the game well. I did not create this game, but I am obligated to play it according to the rules handed to me.

Economics and politics are swirled around in this too, along with race, class, and gender.

My goodness. I am so tired, mentally.

Thinking about this gets too complex and tiring for me. I have many thoughts swimming around my brain. Please forgive my incoherence.