Someone dear to me is in Toronto for the year, earning as much as they can at two manual jobs: 8-4 6-to-7 days, 5-12(:30) M-F.
Every time they check in, I feel this twinned sadness that they're working themselves ragged to pay off a debt, & this sense of frustration, that I can't magick more work out of my fields to bring them home sooner.
But our fields are so different that the pay for work, *when* it exists, is leagues apart. Which is wild. So many people breaking their bodies for peanuts.
@MLClark I feel like that's a trap a lot of us are forced into.
@thegamerauthor 100%. When I lived in Canada I was working every day across multiple jobs, too - and just to pay for the basics while trying to claw my way out of student debt. The hard part is that people start to assume you just "like" to work all the time, you're a "workaholic" and that's why you can't go out for a beer or a hang with friends. That's deeply demoralizing. One wants to be doing better but one can't. I lived on rice eggs & lentils for a year to save up enough to start over here.
@MLClark at one point, I was actually submitting recipe ideas for ramen noodles because it was literally all I can afford, and all we were eating. A close friend works two jobs and still comes up short of her monthly expenses. There has yet to be a system in a developed country that isn't designed to completely break you, I've noticed. Glad you were able to start over.
@thegamerauthor Ha! Are you old enough to remember those 80s and 90s computer mags where people submitted bits of code & computing tricks? Because your ramen noodles recipe pitching puts me in mind of mags of that type. RAMEN EATER MONTHLY! INSTA-EATER DIGEST! 😅
Still precarious here - but differently. I get panic attacks / extreme suicidal ideation at the mere thought of ever having to go back to that, so truly, you have my deepest of hopes that you've got more stability for yourself now. 💙
@MLClark I grew up in the 80's and 90's! Apparently I'm a Xennial rather than Gen-X haha. I remember having to write these recipes down and mail them in by hand to hopefully get more Ramen! I remember when they were ten cents each! I'm doing fine these days but I never forget my broke/homeless days, ever. We're all one bad day from that. I the precariousness of your situation passes. No one should have to live like that.
@thegamerauthor Yay, fellow Gen Y! (I just grew up in a computer household, so I was no stranger to those mags early on.)
No one should have to live like that - agreed. But as you sagely note, we're dealing with systemic-level failures here. The one "gift" of our respective experiences with precarity is that they deepen the well of empathy for others.
I hope we both live long enough to see a far kinder world. Have a great day, too!