I am the 99%

I was born in poverty. My mother had a terminal illness diagnosed around my birth, and was unable to work to provide for my sisters and I. My grandparents had to support all of us on their retirement income, and when mom died, my grandparents continued to raise us on their meager income.

When evidence of a heart attack that forced my grandfather into retirement 20 years earlier could not be found, his benefits were taken away and he had to deliver newspapers to keep food on the table for his wife and grandchildren. He was in his 80's.

I've never had money, but I've been working like crazy to make ends meet. I attained a degree in 2004, and got a job that summer, but left it for personal reasons to move to a different state. Then the economy collapsed, and I was never able to find work in that field. I gave up, went back to school to study business, and am now an entreprenuer determined to claw my way out of the trenches.

But I'm also a full time student (working on degree #2) with a full time job. Most entrepreneurs don't earn a dime for the first two years, so I can't rely on my business to pay the bills yet. Unable to afford to just go to school, and unable to make ends meet yet with my business ventures, I have to pull full time hours to keep the lights on. That job is a temp job, which is all I've been able to find over the last 18 months.

That job had a massive layoff over the summer, and I was let go. At 30 years old with no savings, I found myself on unemployment and dumpster diving for scrap metal to make ends meet. My temp job asked me to come back at the end of the summer, and I accepted, but the downtime put a major dent in my ability to save for the future.

Determined to make a serious change, I shifted my focus and started saving. In just a few months, I had $600 in the bank. But then medical issues, and a lack of health insurance, derailed the savings I had built up and caused me to miss work.....which put me further in the hole. Now I'm back to square one.

Life should not be a constant struggle to keep your bills paid. Health issues should not derail the finances of you or your family, as they have done so often in my life.

I am overworked
I am overstressed
I am going deeper into debt to change my life on the gamble that it'll pay off.
I'm underpaid and struggling.

I am the 99%.

Stunned.....

I'm stunned.

I got laid off yesterday. 2011 has been a great year for me so far! LOL!

Technically I'm still employed. I work for a temp agency and I was on a contract with a legal claims administrator call center. I can't say more than that. But my temp agency wants to see if they can place me in a new job Monday morning. Meanwhile, I'm stuck living in what was recently declared the poorest city in Ohio with hardly any cash left. I'm glad I've got some studio work coming in. Some of the work I've got right now is paying me with an exchange of equipment that I need (though right now I could use the cash more), and I can't go back on that deal at this point (though the client are friends and would understand if I said I had to, I just don't want it to get to that point). I've got a few other projects coming down with the studio, which is good, but it's time to ramp up my efforts to find clients for Skyline. I'm going to be out in Columbus tonight at the Alrosa in full force pimping my operation, but first I have a contract meeting in 2 hours, followed by a job hunt at the public library.

It's also time to start searching for a new day job, though I doubt I'll find something that paid as well as I was earning at my last assignment with my temp agency. Who knows, maybe the temp agency will be able to place me somewhere great Monday and it'll all work itself out! Or maybe they'll give me a crappy job with crappy hours and crappy pay that I can't afford to even go to because of the high gas prices and the 50+ mile commute! Who knows at this point.

I can tell there's going to be some panic creeping in at some point. Right now I'm more stunned than anything, and I'm not really thinking too much about how I'm going to stay afloat. I have $70 in savings, which isn't going to help a damn thing, but it's good to know it's there (though the point of saving is to forget it's there til it's ABSOLUTELY needed, it just might come down to that soon).

This brings me to a rant about the state of employment in our country. The last two jobs I've had were with temp agencies. I realize that a job is better than no job, but it seems that for a while all I was seeing was temp jobs. I don't know if that's still the case, I haven't been looking at the job market since October. But if it's still the case, then I have to say that we're in sad shape. Here's why.

There's no such thing as job security. There never has been, there never will be. It's an illusion created to help people feel that they'll be ok, and for some people they do make it. But for some, as soon as the economy goes south or the cost of production changes or the technology used to produce a good or service changes, they get let go because the company needs to keep it's bottom line healthy. I don't blame the company, it's main focus is to try to maximize profits and keep growing! It's a business, not a welfare office! If I were in charge of a company that had to make the tough decision to lay off some of it's employees, I can only imagine how hard that decision would be to execute. However, it would be an easy decision to have to make. Do I keep my company healthy and growing, therefore keeping the entity as a whole afloat by getting rid of the part that could be dragging us under, or do I feel bad for people who's lives will be ruined by that decision and keep them all on board while the whole ship goes down?! Easy decision. I let go of what's dragging us down. Hard decision to execute, and I guarantee I'd lose sleep over it.

But here's where I find a problem. I noticed a trend after the economy started rebounding. All the jobs, as I pointed out, are temp jobs! Why is that? Well, from what I understand it's easier to get the manpower needed by hiring temps than by hiring your own workers. You can pay them less, and they aren't technically YOUR employees. If you need to trim the proverbial fat, you just end their assignment and have their agency try to place them somewhere else. Let the temp agency deal with the employment issues. Companies were scared to hire on full time employees because no one knew where the economy was heading. This was an easy way for them to get the manpower they needed when they needed it without having to commit to actually HIRING anyone.

I've seen more and more "now hiring" signs lately, so hopefully this trend is coming to an end. But one things for sure. I don't believe that our country's work force can sustain itself by only being able to get temp jobs. A job is a job, but if all the jobs are expendable, what does that mean to our economy?

The reality of my situation will no doubt sink in very very soon, and I'll start panicking. I haven't reached that point though, as I'm trying to stay positive and search for new opportunities. I'm trying to look at this as the proverbial slate being wiped clean, putting me on the path that I really belong on. After all, if there's one thing I can say about 2011, it's been a year of confusion and challenge in the face of unwanted change and adversity. There isn't a SINGLE aspect of my life that is the same as it was 12 months ago. Not ONE.

Wish me luck.