Queercents

It seems like everyone I know is in the middle of a career transition. Or they’re contemplating one, or they’ve completed one. I don’t know if this is my age group (I turned thirty this year), or the time of year, or trying to be creative in the middle of a recession, but it’s a reality that can’t be ignored.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a look at a handful of queer friends and acquaintances and exploring how they landed in their careers. A gay firefighter, a lesbian CEO of a startup, a gay interior designer, a transgendered community activist, a lesbian newspaper editor, and a closeted gay Navajo artist: what do they all have in common? How did their choices bring them to where they are today?

Risky Business in a Slow Economy: The Interior Designer

The small house next door has been on the market for a long time, at least since last summer. A few weeks ago the For Sale sign came down, and landscaping and patio construction began.

I finally met the new neighbors today, on my way to the laundromat. They’re a couple in their late thirties or early forties, with a little Shih Tzu dog. John pinged my gaydar immediately. (I probably pinged his too, especially since I’d just returned from the hairdresser with a new super-short haircut.) John told me he’d worked at a local retailer for over twenty years as a facilities manager, and last summer he was told his position was being eliminated. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the economy is even tighter, gas is obscenely costly, and everything from milk to repair service has shot through the roof will you tip people less in an attempt to pinch a penny? Over the past months, Mike did an extended series on Tipping Etiquette which was enlightening and fun. I recently heard on the news that people who depend on tips for their livelihood are really feeling the pinch. I wondered about that and wanted to learn more.

According to the Pensacola News Journal their article “Economy takes bite out of servers’ tips” says:

Even in the best of times, workers who depend on tips for a substantial part of their income - food servers, bartenders, cab drivers and hairdressers often struggle to keep afloat.
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But as gas prices, food prices and retail prices attest, these are far from the best of times. Folks are holding tighter to their wallets as the economy gets rockier.

Just ask your favorite waiter or waitress.

“Average tips used to be 15 (percent) to 20 percent (of the bill),” said Linzy Butcher, 19, a waitress at two area restaurants - Ollie’s Neighborhood Grill in Milton and TGI Friday’s in Pensacola. “Lately, it’s like 12 percent. People tip a little bit less.”

If you think about it, that is like an instant 3-7% decrease in salary at a time where the cost of everything is rising. Of course that’s not the only factor at play. As prices go up, you are typically calculating your tip on the grand total which is most likely higher now than just one year ago. Read the rest of this entry »

“My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That’s almost $7.00 in dog money.” - Joe Weinstein

I get on weird kicks every now and again where I go through ‘what if’ scenarios in my head. I think it relates to my fascination with the end of the world and survivalist stories. Or perhaps it is my motto, “Plan for the worst and hope for the best”. Either way I get caught up in stories of rising grocery prices, oil/electricity rationing, or if we will go through another great depression.

In some ways it can be a depressing to dwell on, but in those dark daydreams there is inspiration. It makes me think of ways I need change in case the ‘what if’ becomes the news of today. Read the rest of this entry »

Every person has a money story. You can tell whether your money story is empowering or disempowering simply by observing how much struggle (or lack thereof) you experience in the financial areas of your life. I believe the current recession we are experiencing will only serve to magnify each person’s current mindset. After all times of higher stress always serve to separate the pack.

At all times your finances are the result of your money mindset and are a reflection of your personal relationship with money. This fact holds true whether you earn millions or minimally. Money is like a mirror into our beliefs and thought patterns.

Dana at Financial Independence for Everyday People puts it this way:

Your money mindset boils down to two pairs of emotions: fear/opportunity and scarcity/abundance. I like to use teeter-totters to illustrate the trade-offs between different alternatives.

When we feel fear we contract. That means we close off to possibility and opportunity. Right now I see so much fear as people talk about the recession and the media goes wild with its panic-inducing coverage that people are closing themselves off to what could be possible. For instance, the minute someone declares that the economy is in tough times, people start milling around and shifting their conversations to what they can’t do. I can’t go on vacation. I can’t afford gas. I can’t afford to hire you right now. I can’t afford to invest in myself until I have the money. I can’t, I can’t I can’t. Well, what you focus on expands. Read the rest of this entry »

I bought gas this evening–a pretty rare event for me. I rely heavily on public transportation, so I only need to fill up my car every five or six weeks. The Sunoco station has little TVs playing the news above each pump, presumably to distract you from the astronomical amount of money you’re dropping on that gas, and I noticed an economic pundit say something about, “including the possibility of the r-word.”

Not, “including the possibility of the r-word, recession.” She didn’t need to explain it: everyone knows what the r-word is. What’s that joke–the media has correctly predicted two out of the last 97 recessions? Obviously, they’re talking about it enough.

On the one hand, I find the truly apocalyptic economic forecasting pretty convincing: fuel and food prices affect more people more deeply than most other economic markers, and they’re getting out of control. I believe that the people directly affected by the subprime meltdown are in real trouble, and that letting the market correct itself around them is socially unconscionable. Read the rest of this entry »

After college graduation, I gave myself a break from intense reading–for a couple of months, I read nothing but light novels and graphic fiction. I love fiction and comics all the time, and don’t always see them as fluffy–but after writing my thesis and loading up on literary theory and cultural studies courses at the end, I consciously gave myself a break.

The first genuinely challenging thing I read that summer was How To Be Alone, a book of essays by Jonathan Franzen. It was the perfect thing to start understanding all that literary theory and cultural studies in the context of a 9-to-5 and life outside academia.

How To Be Alone is about the problem of individuality–all the arguments, from the perspectives of brain function and social construction, that what we think of as our personalities are less under our control than we hope–and then his struggles towards individuality anyway. (If you can imagine, for Jonathan Franzen, being an individual has a lot to do with reading literary fiction.) Read the rest of this entry »

Rhea Becker is a Boston-based journalist and blogs at The Boomer Chronicles, a fantastic site for baby boomers. She employs humor (e.g. “Does this blog make me look fat?”) and other commentary about life on the verge of fifty (check out her five-part series on Aging and Our Senses). She’s written a guest post for Queercents about the demise of the mom and pop shop in America and why we should support local businesses. These are her words…

I’m lucky. Independent businesses are plentiful in my neighborhood of Boston (Jamaica Plain). This enables me to spend my money at a shop owned by an individual rather than continue to stuff the belly of the corporate beast. So instead of shopping at Home Depot or Lowe’s, I shop at the locally owned hardware store. One Saturday morning a few years ago I was out doing my errands when I stopped at the hardware store for a few things. When I got to the register, I realized I had meant to go to my bank first. I didn’t have a cent (nor a credit card) on me. I told the man behind the counter that I would be back to buy my things later. Without missing a beat, he began to ring up my purchases. “You’re in here all the time. Just come back and pay later.” Try that at Home Depot. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I was on the phone with a friend, and it seemed to me that out of nowhere she said, “Gosh, you sound really panicky about money lately. I mean, really panicky.”

I was miffed and quickly denied it. But when I hung up the phone, I realized that I shouldn’t BS myself. Yes, I have been panicky about money. I write about money, which means I read a lot about money, and everything I’m reading seems to materialize around me. There’s business trouble for my family, my 401(k) looks like it has been mauled by a money-eating monster, and I’m a full-time student again, this time around living in the second most expensive city to rent in the U.S. with my partner who is also a full-time student.

By all means, yeah, I’ve been concerned with how to survive without getting into loads of debt, as I’m sure many of you are. Read the rest of this entry »