One year ago today I had $9 to my name. I had just begun working at my current job and was eagerly awaiting my first big paycheck. I suppose I had been spending a lot of money during that time period since I was going to job interviews, buying clothes, missing work at my other job that paid a whopping $6.75 an hour, and still trying to afford luxuries such as toilet paper and soap. Oh, and I had just gotten a 50 cent raise because I had been making $6.25. Well, sadly I had to give up that job because my new job was offering me like twice as much and you know, things like paid sick leave, lots of paid vacation, benefits … the sort of thing one needs in order to maintain sanity.
So there I was, all cool with my new job, calling my mom to ask her if she could send me like $25 so I could buy some necessities since I hadn’t gotten paid yet. I’ve always been pretty independent and a little too proud to ask my parents for much, but I figured that since hopefully it would be the last time I’d ever have to ask for money, that it would be ok. My mom laughed at me and said she would send me a few bucks. Well the $25 came and went quickly …. and I was broke yet again. I remember Todd lending me $20 so I could go out to the bar with Julie and at the time I didn’t even have a credit card because I had closed all of my accounts, refusing to rack up any additional credit card debt. I had decided that if I was too scared to go out and find a decent job, well then I didn’t deserve to have things. I guess I thought it was ok to start begging money from people when I knew the loot was about to come rolling in. Even though I tried to be as independent as possible, if not for my parents and Todd I would probably be a homeless bum out on the street.
During my last year of school at Pitt I was having like a financial crisis. Pitt was expensive. I took out loans but they only covered my tuition. I got a job working 30 hours a week while taking 6 classes for two semesters in a row just so I could get my degree and be done with it. I was pretty burned out from going straight from class to work, then studying constantly and on top of that I didn’t even have an extra buck or two to reward myself after a really hard week. Afterall, $6.25 and hour is like slavery, seriously. And that is more than minimum wage. My job wasn’t difficult but it was physically tiring. I made pizza, stocked things, and was on my feet all night. I was exhausted when I came home and usually went straight to bed. My schedule was crazy. I woke up every morning at 5am, showered, took the 30 minute bus ride to Pitt, studied all morning till classes started, went to classes all day until 3-4, went straight to work, came home, slept. Did the same thing the next day. I worked Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri and Sat. Wednesdays and Sundays were nice, but never long enough to get everything done. I was going insane. I graduated in December 2003 and was so relieved.
I took some time off from the pizza job in December / January and spent some time at home with my family which I really needed. After that, I don’t know what happened exactly. I got kind of depressed and crazy for a while and didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. Time went by fast and I was spending more money than I was making. My parents helped me out a little bit financially a few times. And Todd was just wonderful. He bought me food when I was starving and he bought me clothes when I needed something nice to wear for an interview. He bought me presents and took me to the movies … and I felt guilty as hell. If we wanted to do anything other than sit around and stare at walls, well he had to come up with the $$ to do it because I sure didn’t have any.
In August I was offered a new job and took it. I was so happy that I danced around in circles all day. I couldn’t wait to have money and buy things for people and prove that I wasn’t going to be a beggar forever. I found my new job to be very stressful though. Money was nice, but I was longing for the days of working in the land of pizza. I started having bad anxiety problems again around October-November and couldn’t figure out why. I had my first bad bout of anxiety back in November 2002 and ended up in the ER because I thought I was having a heart attack. For literally months afterwards, my right leg was numb 24/7 and went to the doctor constantly because I was paranoid. I tried counseling for a while but that was stupid. I self diagnosed myself with having anxiety because I was always in financial distress and couldn’t deal with being an adult …. or the fact that I wanted to be an adult but felt like a loser because I wasn’t successful. So, I figured a steady job in a professional environment was going to solve this whole anxiety thing once and for all. I guess I was wrong because after starting my new job my anxiety levels rose back to the way they were back when I first started having them. I guess I was kind of feeling insecure about my job and didn’t really feel like anyone there liked me. I thought a lot of the women were bitchy, and the company was going through a rough time because it is small, and they had just lost like 7-8 employees so there was always some kind of crisis. I just came into all of it at a bad time and didn’t understand what the hell was going on.
Things got much better though. I’ve received my praise, my promotion, and respect of my co-workers. I still dislike many of them. What can I say, women suck and most of the people I work with are of my gender. At least one of my bosses is a man and he is probably the most crazy and sweet person in the world, but he is usually traveling overseas, but I manage to maintain some sanity at times. And in the past year I’ve paid off some debt, saved some money, gone on vacation, and for the first time was able to help others out financially. So …. overall its been good and I’m sure glad that it isn’t August 26th 2004 right now.
So it isn’t all about the money people, but having some definitely helps in working out all the other crap. When your first priority is figuring out how to buy a roll of toilet paper, well the other things just don’t seem as important. I’m by no means well off, but I can say that I’m so much happier now and have a much more positive outlook on life. And that is very good. I don’t know why I just decided I needed to recap my life story here because I’m sure I already did that like 5 times in this blog, but I was reading old entries last night and came across that one from exactly a year ago and I just thanked God that I’ve moved on from all that crap.
But then I have to ask myself if this is going to happen again if I move, change jobs, or anything else significant happens in my life. And honestly, I don’t think it will. The whole time I was in college I was so scared to graduate and join the real world. I didn’t know what a real job would be like and it freaked me out. I feel confident now. My job is insane but the good thing about it is that I know I have so much experience now and can do anything I want. I dream about going to interviews and knocking the socks off people. My job experience now exceeds shredding paper and cooking pizza. I’ve lived alone now for over a year and haven’t died alone in my apartment yet, so I think its going to be ok. For once I finally feel like everything is going to be O.K. I’m still gonna knock on wood after writing that though. Knock Knock 😛