"Kathy, you have to have money in order to manage it! Your problem is you don't have any money!"
Truer words were never spoken. These words came from the mouth of a dear friend during my brief stay in the third world country that is West Virginia. This was a dozen or so years ago when I was the sole provider for my family - which at the time consisted of my daughter, my son and ex-husband guy who, at the time, was married to me.
I was the store manager of a gift shop in a little tourist town on the eastern panhandle. It was a lovely shop and I had a lovely time working in it. But the various worldly demands made of me tempered my enjoyment. I made $9 an hour. And feeding everyone and taking care of everyone's needs on that salary was challenging to say the least.
Fast forward to my life today. I am a cashier in a "healthy supermarket." I make fifty cents more an hour than I made at the gift shop job in 1996. I stand in a cubby behind a cash register for roughly 8 hours a day. I crave activity and a feeling of usefulness. When there is a steady stream of customers to keep me busy, there is no problem. I can pretend like entering information into the store's computer system about each and every item purchased is a useful thing. I can pack up the customer's groceries and load them into their carts and pretend like I'm being helpful. When there is not a steady stream of customers, I pace around in my tiny cubby like a caged animal longing for freedom. My boyfriend says the cubby that I stand in is too small for my dreams.
Ah yes. My dreams.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to travel the world. Today, I am a writer, even though I currently don't get paid to write. I am an artist who makes no money at her craft. And this year, I worked on my very first movie - again, not for money. This year was a bit of a milestone for me: I traveled to Brooklyn twice.
I am not living up to my full potential and I make a ridiculously low salary which is not nearly enough to pay for my existence on the planet. These are hard realizations to allow to manifest in one's consciousness.
Tim LaFollette recently told me to stop being a wimp. He said this after I told him that I am too scared to play guitar in front of people. Tim LaFollette is battling a disease that will end his life. He is doing so with humor and dignity. When he told me to stop being a wimp, I realized I am the biggest fucking wimp on the face of the planet. And I have no excuses.
I have talents and skills which I do not exercise during my daily grind. I long to feel useful and productive. I would feel useful and productive if I were to utilize my true talents. Yet do I seek out opportunities which will allow me to utilize the talents that lie dormant for eight hours a day?
No. I do not. And it is this awareness that makes going to work such a chore.
My sister, Boot Camp Becky, tells me "You need to believe in yourself!" I wonder in what way.
I believe in my ability to create. I believe in my ability to make people laugh. I believe in my ability to tell a story or to write a song. I believe in my ability to connect with people, to listen with respect and compassion to their stories, to empower them. I believe in my ability to be the person I want to be. But I do not believe in my ability to translate all this into a money-making venture.
"Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money...if all you want...is to make a lot of money."
This quote from the film Citizen Kane haunts me. Is that all there is to it: if I need to make more money, I just need to focus on making more money? Why does that concept elude me? Why am I unable to motivate myself to simply make money?
Typically, I find ways to justify my inability to focus on money. Typically, I dodge a lot of financial bullets. Occasionally however, I am hit. Major illnesses, mishaps with the law, automobile repairs, these are among the biggest bullets. Up until recently, I've been doing pretty well with the ol' robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul strategy. Today, my years of financial struggle came to a head in a millisecond during an insignificant transaction at lunch time. And as a result, my self worth was called into question.
Each day that I work at Planet Care, I select food items from its salad bar and purchase my meal. I purchase my groceries from Planet Care because I'm too tired or lazy to go anywhere else at the end of a shift. In this regard, Planet Care and The Company Store have a lot in common.
Today I took my salad bar selection to the cash register reserved for employee purchases. Planet Care employees are able to purchase salad bar items for half the cost of the average customer. This is called a "staff meal" purchase. And this is fairly nice. In an instance such as today, the meal that I had selected would have cost the average customer $5.32. The salad bar items are sold by the pound at $7.99 per pound. We cashiers remove the weight of the dish or receptacle that the customer has placed their food selections in. So in theory, the customer is only being charged for the weight of their food.
Items such as meat, fruit, potatoes and beans are heavy either because of their density or water weight. I try to avoid heaping too many heavy items on my plate. I base my food selection on the amount of money I will have to shell out for it at the cash register. I try to keep my cost a little below $3. This is less than a pound of food. Which is ok really, because I only have 20 minutes in which to eat. It is better to buy a little food which can be thoroughly masticated than a lot which one must forcibly swallow in large chunks.
Declined.
I had no cash. I had nothing with which to barter. I could have opened a vein and payed in blood. But my blood is defective. I'm pretty sure that offer would have been rejected.
It takes roughly 17 minutes of my time working at Planet Care to earn enough money to buy this meal that I would have to consume in 20 minutes or less. I could have offered to tag an additional 17 minutes onto the end of my shift. But this is not the way Planet Care rolls. I needed an immediate form of payment. Fortunately, a co-worker was buying her meal at the same time as I and offered to pay for both. I feel it is noteworthy to mention that her name is Hope.
Yes, in money matters, I suck. In other regards, I'm a pretty decent human being. But the money thing is a real ball-buster. Something as simple as being rejected by the bank for having insufficient funds to pay for a $2.66 meal creates such a staggering sense of worthlessness, anger and depression.
I had $2.66 worth of food which cost me - at the current rate of $9.50 an hour times the amount of time I spent feeling bad about insufficient funds and my co-worker bailing me out so I could eat lunch - $85.50 worth of angst. I am no economist, but it seems like I should invest in my future with a bit more discernment.
I can relate to a lot of this. I also feel dormant for 8 hours a day, wishing I could help people or do something creative. I'm also a wimp. I can't even stay up late enough to catch a Knaves gig. I often think about my own health problems in terms of "what if I were in someone else's position" and it could be so much worse for me, and yet I still let it hold me back. My heart aches for people who are on the fringes of destitution, like my friend Clement, when I go in to work and see highly-paid people who just want more. I am finally channeling some of this angst into art, not for sale or even public consumption, and using my own blood as a medium (from finger pricks testing for diabetes). I made one yesterday that says, "if you knew you could alleviate suffering of your fellow humans in your lifetime, would you? and how low would the cost have to be for you to do it?" Even though we don't see each other often, know that I love and respect you.
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