I understand now why I lost my job months ago, and why I have failed to get a new one.
The answer is simple; I don't have an education.
You see, technically, I am a high school dropout.
I say technically because my status as a high school dropout did not last for long. After my father killed himself when I was 16 I dropped out of high school. In school, I was a low C student, though that was largely due to a lack of effort on my part and a horrendous attendance record. At that point in my life I didn't see the point in school, or for that matter, anything.
So, at the age of 17 I took a job as a cook to help support my widowed mother and my younger brother and sister, but I was still unhappy. Long hours, low pay and stressful work taught me something, two things really, the first lesson was that I would rather use my brain than my back to earn a living, and the other lesson was that earning a low wage sucks. So I went back to school.
And I got straight A's. For the first time in my life I got straight A's.
So I applied to St.John's University. I wanted to be a writer. I wrote a long essay about my experiences in life up to that point and I was accepted, so I went to college.
But at that point in my life I was totally unprepared to live on my own, and I quickly became depressed. My grades were good. I had a 3.4 GPA after my first year, but I lived a lonely, solitary life on campus, I didn't date because I was ashamed of my appearance and my poverty. Other students had nice clothing and money to go out with and a family to support them. I did not. The only money I had in college I earned by writing term papers for other students. I laugh now, looking back, because even then writing sustained me, but I let depression and it's little brother procrastination get the best of me, and when I failed to properly file my request for financial aid for the next year I was denied re-admittance, so I went back to work.
My uncle, a union teacher and self avowed socialist, took me in. Living at home with my alcoholic mother wasn't helping me, so my uncle Gary let me move in with him in New Jersey. There, I took a job as a janitor at the local elementary school. The job was a lonely one and tedious, but I passed my time writing my novel. When that job dried up I got a new job as a waiter. I fell in love with a girl and we moved in together, but after a few months we broke up and I had no reason to stay in NJ, so I moved back to NY. This cycle would repeat itself for the next few years of my life until I moved back to New York City and took a job as a cashier at a fastfood restaurant where I earned only $7 an hour, but through hard work I eventually became manager of the restaurant, and when they opened a second location and then a third I stayed on, until four years had passed and I was earning twice the wage I had started at. My hours were long, I often worked 60+ hours a week and 6 days a week out of necessity, because that was what was best for the business, but in the back of my mind I new that while my wages were only going up $1 a year my boss, the owner, was making millions. What I gained was the knowledge of how to run a business, how to train and manage a staff, how to hire and when necessary fire employees, and how to deal with both merchants and customers, but the fact that I was slowly going nowhere gnawed at me, so eventually I quit and took a new job in a totally unrelated industry that I had no experience in, sales.
So I got hired at a women's boutique selling fragrances and skincare products. Now, picture a guy built like an offensive lineman who had been a restaurant employee his whole life, you can imagine my surprise when I got the job, but I have been blessed with the gift of gab and a damn near photographic memory, so I made it work, and the process I had been through before repeated itself. I got a raise, became a manager, and eventually got my own store to run in the east village. Then the banksters destroyed the world economy.
At the time, I was sharing an apartment with my best friend, who was an apprentice union ironworker at the time. Before the economy crashed in the summer of 08 he was struggling to pay his share of the rent, but when the crash kicked in he couldn't pay at all, and so I lost the apartment, but my brother let me move into his place in a different part of Queens. Over the next few days I was busy moving in between working shifts, and this caused me to be late a few days in a row. After a few days off I went in to work only to be discovered that I was fired for tardiness. Then the slide downward began.
My depression returned, though it never really goes away, having chronic depression is like having a bad knee, it's always there, you just tend not to notice it until the weather gets bad. At my brother's I stopped looking for work, or worse, I half-assed it. My younger brother indulged me out of kindness, but grew impatient. Eventually we had a huge row of an argument and I moved out, back upstate to Orange County New York, the home of my youth, to live with my mother.
At the time, my mother had suffered a stroke a year before, and she had hardly recovered. I was not allowed to officially live with her because she was living in a retirement community which did not allow residents under the age of 50, so I had to sneak around just to come and go. This was 2 years ago. I was hopeless. I had no car, no money, no job, no place to live, I was like a ghost, a shell, a specter of the man I always thought I would be, but I continued writing, writing my fiction, writing here on Daily Kos, and after a while I developed a close friendship with several Kossacks. Then, on the drop of a dime, I flew cross country to Colorado, which, I had been told, is the Shiznit.
So I lived in Colorado and worked, but it was not meant to last, so I took a bus ride to Illinois where some other wonderful Kossacks I know put me up for a few weeks. There, the situation was much like my stay at my mothers' in Orange County, NY, I had no car, and thus no job, no money, no car, no job, no girl. Sometimes, the songs are right, and sometimes they are wrong.
My friend, the iron worker, decided to drive from NY to IL to visit me, but once he arrived he decided for me that I was going to come back to New York. 6 months after I had left NY I was headed back, first by bus from Colorado to Chicago, and then by car, across Illinois and Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia, until eventually Pennsylvania and New Jersey yielded me back into the arms of the Big Apple.
And I quickly got another job as a cook. And I worked until they fired my boss, and then I took his responsibilities, and then they fired my prep cook and I took his responsibilities, and then they fired my dishwasher and I took his responsibilities. I was doing 4 jobs for the price of one, and the stress was driving me insane, so one day I had a huge blow up argument with the bosses daughter, and that set the wheels in motion for me to be replaced. After one more mishap in the food service industry I found myself where I am today, without a college education, without a job, or a car, or a plan.
So, this is the lesson I have learned, as I have come full circle on the free market merry-go-round, without education we have nothing. I have always been a nerd. I love to read. I love to write. It is who I am. But I don't have the diploma that is required to get a good paying job with job security and benefits, and now, as I find myself thisclose to losing my home, I understand now something that I never fully understood before, and that is they can take away from you what you earn in life, but they can never take away your experiences, who you are, what you have done, the love that you have and give, for yourself and for others and for what you care about, they can't take that away.
In the New York of my youth I learned pain and suffering, at College I learned that I can learn anything, in New Jersey my uncle taught me how the world works, in Manhattan I learned how to succeed and run a business, in Colorado I learned that I am worthy of love and that I can make it anywhere, and now, as I sit and type, I have learned that I don't know shit, and that is a good thing, because it means that there is still more to learn, still more work to be done, and that gives me hope, hope that tomorrow will be better than yesterday if only I fight, but fighting harder isn't the answer, fighting smarter is.
So I wanted to share these thoughts with you today if you are struggling or alone or whatever your needs might be. I have decided to go back to school, after ten years and more of life experience, it is time to get that piece of paper that says I earned it. Knowing it isn't enough, I have to prove it, not only to the world, but to myself.
My question to you, dear reader, is how do I begin?
Without a degree the jobs available to you will be low paying and will have no job security. At least, that's what they told us a decade ago when I was in high school, and the pessimist in me says it still is no guarantee, but the realist in me says that I have to start somewhere. I would like to be a teacher like my uncle Gary, but I would also like to write, as that is where my passion truly lies. Then again, I am a political creature, maybe that is a better route. I don't know. All I do know is that I have to start again somewhere.
So as I continue to look for work and try to scrape together the rent as best I can I would like to ask you for your advice, and if you can, your help. I want to pay the rent so I have a secure place to live. I want to get a GOOD job, one that I can be proud of, with good pay and security and benefits, I just don't know where to begin. To paraphrase Frodo, I will go to school, though I do not know the way.
Any and all help or advice is greatly appreciated. What I lack in material possessions I have been given in friends. I would much rather have the latter.
But help is a two way street. I hope that my story helps someone else in reading it to know that they are not alone. If I can do it, you can do it. I hope reading this helps you as much as writing it helps me.
Peace and love to all
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