It's all in the game.

So here I am, working at a coffee shop again for the time being. I don't mind the work. The people are cool. And this shop is in the heart of Downtown Berkeley, a colorful and fascinating neighborhood, which helps keep things interesting. Stuff is always happening. The other day, a few hundred people marched by the shop, protesting China's occupation of Tibet. That was pretty cool.

But I do mind the low rate of pay, and the low number of hours. To be honest, I'm still a little surprised that I've had as much trouble as I've had finding a job that pays at least a bit better. I've got another interview lined up this Thursday, which I really hope I get. (Agonizing pre-interview decision: Do I spend the money on getting my hair trimmed, for fear that my long hair isn't making the best impression on prospective employers?) I'd feel like a bit of a jerk, jumping ship so soon after taking this job at the coffee shop, accepting another job, but I suppose it's not as if people don't leave these jobs after a brief period all the time, and I suppose it's not as if they deserve my loyalty, considering what they're paying me. As my man Omar on The Wire is fond of saying, "It's all in the game."

"Help my union? For 25 years, we been dying slow down there. Dry docks rustin', piers standin' empty. My friends and their kids like we got the cancer. No lifeline got throwed all that time, nothin' from nobody. And now you want to help us? Help me?" -Frank Sobotka

So, yeah, The Wire. Watched the first, I dunno, six episodes way back when, thought it was boring. Then recently I decided to give it another chance. Somewhere around episode nine, something clicked. I finally acquired the taste for The Wire, I guess. And I just finished the second season, which for me was even more powerful than the first. Frank Sobotka, the union leader who gets caught up in criminal dealings and becomes the focus of the task force's investigation, is one of the more compelling criminals I've ever come across. I really feel for him. The things he does are wrong, and he makes some bad choices, but his personal reasons for doing those things are all basically good. There's been a kind of betrayal of the way of life that he and his fellow dockworkers have essentially been born into. The work dries up. The men no longer have enough money to provide for themselves and their families. And Sobotka does what he does in an attempt to help them, to provide.

It is, as many critics have said, a literary show. In terms of its pacing, its characters, the way it grapples with themes and social issues, the way it holds up a mirror to our society, it feels like a really good book, only one you watch instead of read.

I think Omar's expression resonates with me because I have a tendency to think of things, even extremely important real-life situations, as if they are games. Right now, the big game for me is the money game. Scrounging by on coffee shop pay at 20 hours a week or whatever is going to be extremely challenging, if not impossible. I've made some significant adjustments. I've cancelled my few small monthly charitable donations, to the ACLU and the HRC. I've put my Netflix account on hold, desperate as I am to see The Wire Season Three. My on-again, off-again subscription to World of Warcraft has gone off again, despite the fact that, as getrichslowly.org shows us, we can learn a lot about money from the game. (getrichslowly continues to be a source of encouragement, knowledge and inspiration. J.D. has been through some tough times, and his frankness about his mistakes and struggles, and his subsequent success feels like a source of comfort and support as I struggle with the situation I find myself in.) I'm selling off some stuff on amazon.com. I've even cancelled GameFly for the time being, which, for me, was the hardest decision, because of course I love playing, thinking about and writing about games, and still entertain thoughts of doing it professionally at some point. I'll be taking a break from new games for a little while, but hopefully not for too long. I don't want to miss out on Grand Theft Auto IV.




I'm really excited about this game, not just because the previous games have been astounding from a gameplay perspective, but also because I think this game has tremendous potential in terms of its story. I really think the Grand Theft Auto games have been scathing works of social satire, that they've had something meaningful to say. If The Wire holds up a mirror to our society, the Grand Theft Auto games filter our society through video games and action movies and still wind up with a significant amount of truth, and IV seems poised to follow in that tradition. The fact that the central character is an immigrant from Eastern Europe opens up all kinds of terrific possibilities. Heck, just reading this blurb from the game's information page is enough to get me excited:

What does the American dream mean today?

For Niko Bellic, fresh off the boat from Europe, it is the hope he can escape his past.

For his cousin, Roman, it is the vision that together they canfind fortune in Liberty City, gateway to the land of opportunity.

As they slip into debt and are dragged into a criminal underworld by a series of shysters, thieves and sociopaths, they discover that the reality is very different from the dream in a city that worships money and status, and is heaven for those who have them and a living nightmare for those who don't.

Mercifully, I haven't been dragged into a criminal underworld myself. Yeah, times are a bit tough. And I see myself being a bit more callous about some things. Walking to work the other day, a young woman, somewhat younger than me, asked me for money, and I'm certainly in no position to be giving anyone anything. Not that I would have given her anything anyway. But in the past, Iwould have really felt something, this sense of, I don't know, guilt or fear, this "There but for the grace of God go I" punch to the stomach. But now I just felt kind of removed about it. "Sorry," I said, and walked on without a second thought. I've hit a rough patch, and you're on the street. That's how it goes. It's all in the game.

Most of the time, I know things are gonna be okay. Some of the time I'm terrified. Most of the time, I remember that many people have found themselves in tough situations at one point or another. Some of the time, I feel like the biggest failure, the most colossal fuck-up in the whole history of the world.

But I feel alright.



Yeah, I feel alright tonight.

The Wire Season Two: 10/10 stevedore-replacing robots

Let's Call This the Flashback

With all the Lost I've been watching, I've taken to imagining my life frequently being interrupted by dramatic flashbacks that reveal previously unknown aspects of my past that are somehow relevant given whatever challenging situation I currently find myself in. For instance, while faced with a really difficult choice between two products at the grocery store, I might suddenly remember that time my dad conned me into giving him one of my kidneys. Oh, wait, that wasn't me. That was a character on Lost.

Anyway, it's no joke that I am in a challenging situation at the moment. Still job-hunting, and putting lots of effort into it, but it's taking a lot longer than I would have liked. I've even found myself in the humbling position of asking friends for a little money to help until I'm on my feet again. How did I get into this position? It's not a particularly interesting story, but I'll tell it anyway.

Woooooooooooooooooooosh! (That's the Lost flashback sound effect.)

By last summer, I'd been working for the same company for nearly three years. Things at work were pretty okay, I guess. I basically liked the company and the people I worked with, and I was good at my job.

Then, sometime in July, I got hit by a pretty nasty case of depression. To be frank, being depressed isn't something particularly new or unusual for me. I think that I've struggled with depression in greater or lesser degrees for a large part of my life as a result of my gender issues. I mean, there's just no getting around the fact that not being able to be the person you feel you really are every single day kinda sucks, and some days the weight in my chest when I wake up in the mornings is heavier than it is on other days. My least favorite thing about being depressed is the way it makes me feel kind of self-absorbed. It's harder to focus out on other things when you're depressed, much like, if you have a knife in your chest, it's probably hard to think about much other than the fact that you've got a knife in your chest. And I know I'd be better at everything if I didn't feel this way. I'd be a better writer, a better employee, a better friend. But still, at least I've always managed to pull through, to do what needed to be done, to force myself to get out of bed no matter how tough it was.

But this was an unusually rough period, where getting out of bed was suddenly more difficult than it had ever been before. And I found myself running a few minutes late to work on a few occasions. I was promptly pulled aside and warned about this, and I apologized, sincerely feeling bad about what had happened, and communicated to my managers that I was struggling with depression and was seeking help for it, which I was.

Then it happened one more time, and they let me go. That was that.

That sucked, no doubt about it. But I immediately tried to see it as something that could end up being for the best. The reality was that, while I liked the company and my coworkers, I'd started to find the job a bit dull. It was rare for anything at work to really challenge or stimulate me anymore. What's more, I wasn't seeing opportunities for growth in the workplace, and I really didn't feel that the company was paying me what I should have been making considering the amount of time I'd been with them. There was certainly no doubt that my next job could be a considerable improvement.

And it was. I found a job that was more stimulating and challenging, and that paid considerably more. The job was a seasonal position with a company that's significantly busier around the holidays than it is throughout the rest of the year, but I was told from the beginning that there was a chance I would be hired on full-time after the holidays were over. I knew this wasn't something I could count on, but I busted my ass at this job, and I know I impressed the managers, because many of them started talking to me in ways that made it clear they felt I'd be sticking around.

But alas, things didn't go as expected, and when news came down that I wasn't being kept on permanently, many of those managers seemed as surprised and upset about it as I felt. Every last one of them offered to give me a glowing reference and wished me the best of luck in my job search.

My search got off to a promising start. Almost immediately, I had the interview for a technical writing position that I mentioned in an earlier blog post. Of course, that didn't end as well as I would have liked, but still, it was encouraging. However, since then, I've had a lot of phone interviews and face-to-face interviews and I really feel like I'm putting my best foot forward, but landing a job just hasn't happened yet. On Thursday I have another phone interview for a job that sounds pretty cool, but tomorrow I'll also be dropping off applications at a nearby Starbucks and other retail stores, as I'm at the point now where I absolutely positively need to start pulling in some money.

Admittedly I feel pretty desperate--I wouldn't be applying at places like Starbucks otherwise--but I still feel like in the long run all of this might end up being for the best. I'd gotten complacent in my job, but I wasn't really happy, nor was I earning what I should have been, so at this point, even if I have to earn even less for a while, I think I have the motivation to keep looking until I find a job I'm a bit more satisfied with. This is certainly the biggest failure of my adult life, and I admit I've felt some shame and embarrassment about it all, but I know that it's not really a reflection of who I am, but rather of something I was struggling with. I think I've learned a lot from this experience, and that when I do get back on my feet, I'll be better than ever.

And as bad as things get, I can always be thankful that at least my dad has never conned me into giving him one of my kidneys.

--------------------------------

As an aside, a friend recently recommended getrichslowly.org, and I wanted to take a moment to recommend it myself, as it's quickly become a favorite of mine. Interestingly, not long before I lost my job, I'd really started to try getting a hold on my finances, and I think I was applying a lot of the common-sense stuff that J.D. talks about on Get Rich Slowly, but it's really nice to have it reinforced and expanded on by someone who's done a lot more reading about finances than I have. The website is really readable because J.D. doesn't talk down to the reader about this stuff. He comes across as just a regular guy who, like many of us, had struggled with money, and he talks about how he got things under control. There's also just enough of his own personality in the pieces to make things interesting. It's obvious that he's struggled with social anxiety and other challenges, for instance, and that in some ways tackling his money issues and tackling his personal issues have been related endeavors, and I really like that idea, that personal growth can come out of, or is necessary for, better money management.

I've made a lot of progress in terms of how I handle money, I think. I've cut out lots of unnecessary expenses, cut way down on expenses that aren't unnecessary, and I had started saving and tackling debt, as well as starting to think realistically about how I'm going to pay for this whole ridiculously expensive gender thing that I really need to deal with sooner rather than later. Of course, now that I'm not really making any money at all, things are kind of on hold, but I'm confident that I'm more ready and better equipped to deal with these issues now than I was before.