6/10/24

Im just trying to keep busy. For the past few weeks, these words have left my mouth more times than I care to count. As much as the chronic shame that plagues my every thought typically tends to stay on the emotional side of things, there are a few instances in which the raw embarrassment I feel creeps into an area of my life that's not as easily self-medicated. For the past few months now I have been completely unemployed - I say completely because, when attending classes, I don't have much extra time for a job regardless. However, since Summer began, these feelings of genuine shame have lingered in the back of my mind nonstop, only worsened by my inability to rectify it easily. 

This school year has been a rough one, thats no new news to anybody. I started the year deeply remorseful of the life I laid out for myself, a combination of regret for my career choices and confusion toward how I ended up in my place of residence which is only made worse by the fact that there was nothing to be done about any of it. As classes started, one of the biggest things weighing on my mind was how long it had been since I had a job. Previously, I had had a job working as a receptionist, a job I left for a better-paying job that was short-lived due to - what we now know were stress-related - medical concerns leaving me somewhat unable to work. Despite my undying stubbornness to not work when I do not want to, whether a result laziness of or communist rhetoric spread by my Father is up for debate, I am also astutely aware of the financial position I am in, and my need to have a good amount of savings to fall back on once graduation is in the past. I applied, interviewed, and got another job not even a full week after quitting the last. Then quit that one a month later. Though I know I need it, and the voice in the back of my head is much harder on me than anyone else in my life, I simply don't have the desire to be miserable on a 24/7 clock just for the sake of buying clothes more often or going to a concert. Being independent for as long as I have, I've found a way to live on necessities and save as much of my savings as is humanly possible as a way to spare myself the mental torment of working somewhere that makes being alive seem less attractive, but by the time my classes end, and my free time is much more accessible than it is during the school year, the confidence in which I assure my friends and family quitting my job was the right decision wavers considerably.

 I don't live in Arizona. This Summer, I had a few separate trips to take, of which the timing was a non-negotiable, New York for my roommate Katie's 21st birthday, and then home to see my family. As excited as I am, and expectedly so, the timing couldn't be worse concerning my undying desire to prove myself as someone more than a lazy homebody. We leave in late June, and I will get back in late July, taking a good chunk out of my Summer that, had I planned better, would have been utilized to work and save money for my upcoming capstone project and later graduation. The reality, I have come to find, of the situation I'm in, is that nobody really wants to hire somebody who is going to be gone for almost a full month shortly after being hired. The smart thing to do would have been to apply for jobs much sooner and start working just as classes ended so that at least the time prior to my departure could've been for something. But as I said, this year has been less than easy, and in the heat of the moment, securing more work to do just as Im finally free of everything that had been torturing me for the past 5 months was the last thing on my mind. 

For the past month I've been doing every single thing in my power to make it feel like being unemployed was a calculated decision I made on my part. The first challenge I had to conquer was that of the time on my hands. During school, I would wake up at 6am every day, go to the gym from 7-8:30, make breakfast, and go to class until 5. Now I have nothing. The gym is closed to non-Summer students, and I had no need for Summer classes. I began to just do what I knew I could do; make. I made and continue to make as much as I can with my time, building my portfolio, and attempting to improve my technical skills enough that I feel comfortable selling such items and slowly but surely spreading awareness of me as a person, significant or otherwise, in Fashion. Now, from Monday-Friday, I wake up, work, make coffee, and sit at a sewing machine usually from about 10 am to anywhere between 4-7:00 pm, and tell people I'm self-employed, meanwhile talking almost exclusively to myself for days on end. For some reason, that isn't enough to keep my brain from calling me the lazy cow it sees me as so more side hustles are a requirement. While satisfying the creative side of myself with hours of construction work to mild approval from my roommates, the financial side of what I expect a 21-year-old college student should be doing with their time is far from. 

I've had a somewhat successful - in the way I list things and sometimes they sell - seller's page on Depop which requires in and of itself a large amount of attention and time to keep profitable. Unlike most that I encounter at swap meets and Goodwill bins who buy for the sake of selling, my moral compass does not allow such wasteful behaviors, so I'm limited to items I bought and wore for myself, resulting in more than a few hard goodbyes to items I don't wear yet still hold a good deal of fondness for. However, lord knows apps that profit off of the idea that you can make money by simple means like shipping items or delivering food never actually want you to, so Depop is much better as a way to afford an extra shot of espresso in your morning coffee, but far from something to replace an actual hourly wage. Selling your body seems like the logical next step. As I've said more than once, I simply am not a sexually driven person. Though my sexuality is present, and rears its ugly head on more than a few occasions, Onlyfans requires a certain kind of sexual empowerment to feel in oneself that I simply do not possess. Thus a majority of my time spent not making something has been attributed to, what I would summarize as business conferences with myself to "maximize profit" and "gain better market traction" to somewhat scattered success rates. 

Since the end of April, the voices have grown louder than they ever have been before. Though try as I might to do whatever is within my power to keep them at bay, and make myself feel like something - if not a larger savings account - was accomplished, after a certain point being told by yourself that you're a lazy piece of shit does tend to get to you. In this way, everything I've just said is really one big loop. The voices are present so I sew and sell and film to prove to myself that my time is worth something, but the longer I go without financial evidence of that, the louder they get. It becomes more challenging to keep myself afloat, to continue on the regimen I've given myself, and have the motivation to get up and do work when nobody is making me. So I slack off. I don't start sewing at 12 PM instead of 10, or I put off the pile of clothes on my floor waiting to be photographed and listed with a pairing of hashtags labeling it "#thrifted #y2k". But that only makes it worse, makes the voices angrier and more pressing. 

I wanted to write about this topic today because, for lack of better reasoning, it's all that's on my mind; at the end of the day, money is all that matters. Being at home is a great example. I spend most of my days indoors, both because of the temperature of which I am not built to withstand, but also because I have little else to do. But after about 48 hours of not leaving, it feels pertinent that I at least do something. However, living downtown limits the options of something to do to a minimum. I've seen everything already, having lived here for almost four years and walking every day for most of it, there's not a reachable corner downtown I haven't walked past a million times already. But what's more, things cost money. I have coffee and creamer at home, and, as we know, am unemployed, so spending money on anything aside from the bare necessities feels counterproductive. So thrifting and coffee, my typical go-to's, aren't really options, much fewer options to be encouraged. The only really free activity that might actually improve the internal mental torment I've found myself in is going outside outside, the wilderness; for a hike. Hiking is one of my favorite activities in general, and I've done admittedly very little since living here. Why? It is currently 102 degrees outside, and its going to continue growing warmer. To go on a hike, one must wake up at the actual crack of dawn, and embark on a journey alone -as I do in my case- and drive about $10 of gas somewhere completely foreign to me. 

In the past two weeks, I've applied to about a dozen jobs, one of which has reached out and told me they will not be hiring me, the rest I have yet to hear from. Try as I might, obtaining a job is almost as hard on my mind as it is to be jobless, but the pressure persists. I think one of the biggest factors to my rambling headspace is that, aside from Other Christian, nobody else is putting any of this pressure to be productive on me. A lot of that is due to the fact that I make sense, and anyone who has tried to get a job in the last few years knows how challenging both the acquisition of employment is, and the way in which it seems like all Managers are treating their new hires. What's more, I'm right in that, even if I lied about leaving soon, if I did get a job before leaving, they would most likely fire me when I did. My options are limited, and my hands are tied. But I continue to want to do more. To make more, to write more, to film more, to sell more. As much as humanly possible in one day so that, by the day's end, I feel like something has happened for me to earn enjoying my evening. The pressure put on myself by myself is something nothing can alleviate except for me. I think that societal expectations certainly play a role, as much of my self-criticism stems from what I feel I should be doing, but nobody is actively applying such pressure more than I am to myself.