Exhausted..
..and trapped in a viscous economic spiral.
W e have $6 figures in savings & investments and between us we earn close to $ five figures/month and yet we STILL can’t afford to buy a place in our home city.
We pay extortionate rent for a prime location apartment block, only for yours truly to sleep on the couch every night because space is so tight for the three of us — our daughter gets the only room with a door on it.
We’re on the top floor and, at this time of year, the heat is oppressive and unremitting. We keep the windows and balcony doors open nearly all the time to try and encourage a bit of a draft. Trouble is that since we live less than 400m from the beach, the air is full of screaming seagulls, and thanks to the constant 24hr daylight at this time of year, the cacophony is unrelenting.
Screams and heat. Screams and heat. It never seems to end!
Honestly, I’m not looking for sympathy. The reason we find ourselves in this situation is as much about the choices we made over 10 years ago as it is about fate and circumstance. But still, I can’t help thinking that there’s something very wrong in the world when prudent people like us are forced into this kind of situation.
It feels like we are existing rather than living.
On a world scale, we consider ourselves among the lucky few but it’s utterly insane that this is what it now takes to be ‘lucky’. I dread to think what it must be like for the ‘unlucky’ rest.
After having worked for myself for over 20 years, I finally had to get a 9–5. We had no choice and to be honest, I was extremely fortunate to find one. I must have sent out hundreds of applications.
I went from being a personal trainer to being a documentation engineer, which is just a fancy way of saying that you need to be good at MS office rather than good at engineering.
Having been so long out of the system, I’m not particularly good at either. I am very slow compared to the post-millennials fresh out of college but I guess I’m catching up…. slowly….. very slowly.
I’m a contractor for a company that outsources my labour to other companies. I’m on a six month probation during which they can kick me out at a moment’s notice. I have to fill in time-sheets and log my time on each and every project. They’re recording my every move. The pay is utterly tragic but once again, we have no choice.
To me, it feels like nothing more than modern slavery.
The only ‘good’ thing is that I can work from home for most of the time which saves me from having to be in the company of dozens of miserable fat people, silently staring at computer screens all day. But I resent that my home has now become their office. They should be paying me rent.
Work and play, home and office — all have long-since lost their original meanings and have merged into a miserable post-pandemic existence. People are fooled into thinking that working from home is some kind of utopia when in fact it’s a complete nightmare.
My wife is the eternal optimist and I’m the one who is mostly pessimistic and depressed. To be honest, she would have been quite within her rights to have left me years ago but somehow she stuck around. I think they call it love or something.
My daughter is just happy with her pet gerbils and the fact that school is out for the very long summer break. With all the turmoil we’ve been through this year, I keep worrying that she’s going to become a delinquent and start taking drugs. My wife tells me to stop and says our daughter is surrounded by love and gets our undivided attention which is all that matters. I guess she’s right. Kids are also incredibly resilient, in many ways much more so than adults.
So here I am, aged 56, exhausted from the heat and the stress, wondering how I can make it through the week, never mind having to work until I drop into my grave.
Which is why I’m writing. Not only is it therapy but it may one day become my way out of modern slavery, and I can once more do something I enjoy.
I know that the chances are slim but I have nothing to lose. Like anything in life, the more you do, the better you become!
