Dead.

Good news: I have a job offer for the Columbus call center job and I'm supposed to sign paperwork Thursday.

Bad News: I think the starter in my 2001 Hyundai Sonata finally died today and the car won't start.

I don't really have enough gas $ to get back and forth to the new job until I get my 1st paycheck, let alone $ to get a new starter put in.

If I can't get this car started, I can't get up to Columbus, and even if I get up there somehow, I have no reliable transportation to get to the new job.

I really need money to get a starter put in that rusty car. This isn't some scheme. I assure you the damn car is dead at the moment. My dad said to try jump starting it, and maybe then I can get it up to Columbus, but I have no idea if that's gonna work.

This is the reality of poverty. No savings and any small setback can derail an opportunity.

I really need help & I'm running out of ppl to ask.

Wins & Losses.

This has been a good week that has had a couple of downturns.

1 of my 3 job leads died with a rejection email 2 days before I was to attend that company's open house hiring event. 

I went anyway, and had a pretty good in person interview this afternoon. So maybe that counts as a save.

I thought my interview for the technical writer position went pretty well, but the guy was pleasant enough that he was a little hard to read. I'm supposed to hear back on all 3 jobs by Monday.

I came home tonight to discover the people I'm staying with have grown tired of my presence. My best friend's girlfriend really laid into me about doing more chores. As mad as she was, I was equally confused when I pressed her for specifics and she came up with only a couple anecdotes. It probably didn't help that she was drunk. 

This was a pretty big low and just happened. I feel trapped. I wanted to defend myself, but how? They rent this house and I'm the guest, so I'm obligated to do whatever they say(within reason, of course).  But she didn't give specifics. She just said, 'going forward, just try to help more.'

'With what? What specifically have you asked me to do, that I refused? What specific things do you want me to do that I don't do already?'

Just do more to show appreciation, she basically said.  I need to guess what they want done and do it.  Apparently, trash, dishes, feeding the cats, and vacuuming the small bit of carpet in the living room wasn't it, because I already do that.

I feel so trapped. They can ask me to leave at any time and I really have nowhere to go. I could stay at my sister's house, but not my cat... not most of my possessions that I have here.

I wasn't expecting this, although I did sense a distance between us. I do empathize to a certain extent.  They work all day, come home, and there I sit.  It's not like I'm protesting... I have no job... no money to go out and do things.

I really need something to happen for me with 1 of these 3 jobs. I want the technical writer position the most, but that's here in Cincinnati, which means more awkward evenings at my friend's home until I have a place of my own.  It would almost be better to get one of the Columbus jobs so I can be out of this house.  It's the most terrible feeling to be unwanted, especially when you can't just fuck off and go to your own apartment.

I need more money, regardless of the job I get.  All 3 opportunities start 2 weeks from now. Even if they pay weekly, I wouldn't see my 1st check for 2 weeks after I start. That means, even if I get 1 of those 3 jobs, I won't get paid until October.  I don't have enough money to last until then.  I'll need more than I currently have for gas alone.  So if anyone can donate, I'd really appreciate it.  

Hopefully, this week will end on a positive note.

New normal.

My last post featured this pic and it really got no attention. I was demonstrating how little food I had left in my refrigerator, obviously, and I guess readers grew tired of me complaining about being poor.

Of course, my suggestion would be to not read or reply to these posts if that is the case... I mean, it is Poor Blog after all. What did you expect?

That pic was taken on the 6th of June, and by the following Saturday, I had moved out of my apartment.

No longer able to afford rent, I was forced to vacate my apartment.  A friend of mine offered to let me stay with him and his girlfriend at a house they were renting on the West side.

Many of my possessions, I threw away.  What little I decided to keep, is now in a storage unit I'm renting.  The idea is that I can save some of the rent money I would have been paying, so it would be easier to move to wherever I could find appropriate work.

For the time being, this is the new normal.  My job outlook hasn't improved much despite getting help from an executive in the industry.

My connection may have helped me get a phone interview for a position I was really interested in, only to find out in the interview that the job was actually an internship, despite having no mention of an internship in the job description. I was completely humiliated.

I've had a couple other interviews that just evaporated into nothing, even though I thought the interview itself went well.

I hope this doesn't turn into a long term living arrangement. I feel like a third wheel staying with my friend and his girlfriend. They eat out a lot and that cuts into the money I'm saving, but to be fair, it's not like I'm electing to stay behind.

Every crumble beneath my feet in this slow and steady backslide into hopeless poverty has had a dramatic cooling effect on what I used to feel were perfectly reasonable hopes and expectations.

It doesn't seem at all far fetched that someone with my training could get an entry-level job in the food industry in either a marketing capacity or in R&D, but I have had embarrassingly little luck getting past the online application. 

It's not like I'm applying to be some Sr. VP in those departments. My goals seem very reasonable. Yet, every tiny morsel of hope gets stomped out unceremoniously.  I really need to land something I can build on and not another job out of desperation. I need a job I know I can move up in and make a career of, not a job to take until something better comes along. 

I've had too many of those jobs, and the volume of short term employment has only hurt me.  Even the employers of desperation are unwilling to hire me for fear that I'll just leave in a few months.

So that's my update so far. So much has happened, yet so little. I can only hope my next update has better news, but it would be hard to bet on it.

If you have a few bucks and want to donate to the poor(me, I'm the poor), just click on the PayPal button on this blog.  If you just want to leave a comment berating me for my short comings and depress me even further... then you must be a real asshole. Please don't do that. If you still want to help but can't spare a dollar, then post the link to my blog; other people might read it and be able to help.

Thanks,

Sam.

Drought.

Well, the drought continues....

Last I left off, I had no unemployment and $64 to my name. Obviously, things changed, since I'm not yet homeless.  I made a 2nd appeal to unemployment and was approved, giving me a whopping $191/wk while I seek work.

There's a couple things I really need to be honest with myself about... First, is that I can't, in good faith, seek jobs requiring manual labor.  My feet and back are shot and I can't stay standing for more than 15 minutes without being in terrible pain.  I don't know if I'm just carrying too much weight, or I'm just really out of shape, or if I have legit back issues.  Regardless, my feet bruise easily and my lower back is wrecked, which makes manual labor impossible.

I grew up on a farm, so I'm no stranger to manual labor.  I don't think I was any better at it then, I just had a capacity to endure it better.  When I lost my Customer Service job in 2013, I was on unemployment for a few months and fell behind on rent. I tried to work at an Amazon Fulfillment center and lasted about 3 days. The 4th day, I couldn't even walk and had to call in.  My back was so sore at work that I spent every five minutes bent over, trying to stretch my lower back out.  

When I left that job after a week, I lost my unemployment, since you have to be let go to qualify.  That event touched off this blog and the fundraising as I ran out of money and into the very real possibility of being homeless. So if I get a McJob out of my guilt for being unemployed, it too may end the same way, so I have to be smart about what I pursue; this really only leaves me with creative work or call center jobs.

I also realized - being completely honest with myself - that some people really don't like me.  I first noticed this at an early age when we were doing square dancing in gym class and the girl that was paired up with me went to the  principal's office crying because she didn't want to do-si-do with me.  I wonder if this happens in job interviews with professional people who are much better at masking their disdain. I've done fairly well at networking on Twitter, but despite having a good rapport with several influential people, no doors were opened for me.

So I've figured that after next week's unemployment payment, I'll have enough to pay the rent a week late, and really not enough for anything else.  My internet is overdue, and I really need that to apply for jobs.  Hopefully, I can talk them into giving me another week, then the week after that is paid, my auto insurance comes out... then the next week my rent is due again, and I still need food and gas throughout the month.

I'm just barely avoiding homelessness.  I pay bills late, utilities get paid just before disconnection, and even then, just the minimum amount.  A $10 an hour job just isn't going to cut it.  I need a career position, a salary where my take home is more than rent and groceries after taxes every week.  I need to be able to pay on student loans, get healthcare and put money away.

Everything is an emergency right now and it sucks.

I know I'm smart and creative, I just need a good career start with a company willing to take a chance on me.  All I see coming my way are multi-level marketing schemes or manual labor that I literally don't have the ability or the back to stand doing,  I really need some people responding to my applications.  I'd love to do work at an ad firm, maybe copy writing, but those jobs seem sealed shut to anyone who doesn't have a marketing degree and agency related unpaid internships.

I'll keep digging, but for now, it seems the drought will continue.

See that PayPal Donate button? If you have a spare few bucks, I'd really appreciate anything you can give.  If Bill Gates is reading this, I can get an Uber car if I had $10,000 or so...

KickStart Me.

A big ask, but first, a big update...

I made $14,943 last year, including $3,200 in unemployment benefits that were collected from mid-June through September.  I made 30% above the poverty line for a single male with no dependents.  Should I stop complaining about how little money I have or should we all be outraged that the poverty line is set so embarrassingly low at $11,490 per person?

I think the latter.

Most of my income from last year came from the first half of the year when I worked at Kroger's inbound call center.  Thankfully, I got a tax refund of about $1,200 this week, which I can use to pay February and March's rent, with what's left going toward utilities.

I was fortunate enough to get 4 published features on Food Dive, 2 of which I've already been paid for and the other 2 I will use towards food and gas.  Of course, my last 2 features only owe me a total of $80.

I'm not supposed to tell people that... I think because they would be embarrassed for people to know that they pay so little.

So while there have been small bright spots, I am still as poor as ever.  Despite the tax returns, I am only able to pay up one month on rent.  Hopefully, I'll have a job by April, but honestly, it feels like things are slipping away from me, and the honest truth is that the longer I'm unemployed, the less likely I am to get hired.

Writing has been one of the few bright spots of this whole situation, but even that has been strained.  I've told you guys that I have a 7 & 1/2 yr old iMac that is starting to show it's age, but it's now preventing me from writing.  Most of the time, I can't keep the computer on for more than 10 minutes before it crashes.  It's a Late 2006 Intel iMac, so there isn't much I can do to upgrade it.  I've also been able to apply to less employers for the same reason. I start to do an online application, then the computer crashes.  I need to do something about that...

The Big Ask...

Here is where I need your help again.  This time, my rent is secure for at least another month, my food/gas is sketchy, but my big problem is a dying computer.

I need to raise money to get another computer, so I can continue blogging, freelance writing, and of course, applying for jobs.

As before, you can use the PayPal Donate button on the right.

The money I raise(unless I get a massive amount of money) will be used for a new computer that will not fail me, so I can continue to create content when I'm not applying for positions or researching companies I'm about to interview with.

So if you can donate, please do, and if you can't donate, please tweet this blog or share it on facebook so others may donate.  

Frustrations

One week ago, I didn't think I would have a place to live and I thought I might be in the beginning stages of an eviction.  I've since raised enough in PayPal donations through the PayPal button to the right of this post to be able to pay for December & January's rent.

I'm trying to remain positive but new frustrations make getting out of this mess seem less likely.

I applied to many places in the past week.  I applied to Starbucks, both retail and corporate.  The great thing about Starbucks' retail online app is that you can apply for multiple positions at once in a cluster of locations in an area.  Costco uses the same online application software, so I have, with 2 online applications, applied for over a dozen positions.

My expertise is in food and the food industry(not restaurant industry), so I have applied to positions in several companies and several positions in one food company.

To date, I have had a phone interview with one company and several rejection emails from another.  That is it.  I reach a point where I run out of things to do on my end.  At a certain point, I have to depend on someone to hire me.  Hell, at some point, I have to be lucky enough to get just a phone interview.  The truth is that nobody has to give me a moment, a thought, or a chance.

Then the panic sets in...

Am I unemployable?  Is my resume bad enough that there are always going to be other people that get interviews ahead of me?  My resume makes me look a lot worse than I really am as an employee.  I'm smart, I have skills, and I'm a fast learner, quickly absorbing technical knowledge.  But as I tried to start a career after college, I embarked on an odyssey of finding a good job/person fit.

What normally happens is that I run out of time/money and I am forced to say yes to the next opportunity, regardless of if it's right for me.  I took a position in 2008 with Cargill to work in their feed mill.  Cargill is a great company, but my training was in food science and operations, not necessarily mechanical engineering or management in a feed mill.  Boo hoo, right?  I know...  I took the job because Cargill has 54 different business units and I was assured by a corp recruiter that I could get into a different area of the company if my training to be a Plant Manager of a feed mill didn't go well.  That wasn't the case, and after trying(and failing) to catch on in a different business unit, I left.  Cargill was nice enough to give me a month and a half to try to find another position, after which, we would part ways.  Unfortunately, Cargill has a very decentralized HR, and were unable to pluck me from one area and put me in another.

That lasted 5 months.

My odyssey continued with several other jobs where the company was bad or the training program was bad, and in between, I worked lower level jobs to sustain myself until the next opportunity.  So this will be the part where people comment, telling me it's my fault, and to a certain extent, that's true. The question is whether the punishment for being brutally honest about my job/person fit is a life sentence or something I can overcome.  I will not apologize and do not regret being picky about a career position.  If I'm going to work somewhere every day until I retire, then it's going to be doing something I have a passion for and wake up every day wanting to do.

I tried to get into the creative end with marketing and the prospects there seem even worse.  I'm great with ideas, well spoken, and well written.  I thought that I should have no problem being a copywriter... except that I didn't go to school to be a copy writer... except that I didn't work an unpaid internship doing copywriting... except that every copywriting opening starts at 3-5 years of experience in copywriting.

I found the same thing to be true of the ad world.  You can't get a start in advertising... I know this sounds insane, but you have to have always been there to get a foot in the door.  There are no entry level ad jobs.

I like writing and even have a standing offer for freelance writing work, but at $40 a published submission, it's more a hobby than a job.  To make matters worse, I have a computer that keeps shutting down as I get into anything like writing or a long online application.

I have a Late 2006 Intel iMac that I got when I was still at Ohio State.  It's about 7 and a half years old and really starting to show it's age.  To make matters worse, these particular iMacs have a known issue with the soldered on graphics card, where the screen will go black or the computer will overheat.  If my computer freezes while I type this sentence, then blogger will have my progress saved and I can return after waiting for the computer to cool off.  If my computer freezes while in the middle of a long application, I will have to start over, in many cases.

I only asked for the bare minimum amount of PayPal donations to pay rent.  I didn't want to overly rely on online solicitations for all my bills.  But if you like my writing or if you're a fan of Mac OS, I would be willing to accept donations that would help me get another iMac.

I'm probably as likely to get enough donations for that as I am to get hired on somewhere... Either way, I hope I'm wrong.

Dreams & Ambitions.

During this whole ordeal of not having rent, I mentioned in a tweet to Chris Hayes that, I too, had dreams and ambitions.  The perception, which I feel is woefully undeserved, is that poor people are rudderless, lazy, and don't want to improve their situation.

That just isn't true.  I do think many poor people reach a point where being poor for so long has sapped their energy.  If you treat someone like a prisoner, they will begin to act like a prisoner. If you treat someone like they are not good enough, then eventually, they will begin to believe it.

Someone on twitter asked me to 'sell myself' to him before he would consider donating.  It felt a little demeaning, considering the guy only had about 70 followers and less than 900 tweets to his name. Of course, I was begging for money...

But I do have dreams and ambitions.

Ultimately, I would like a creative career.  My strengths are in retaining technical knowledge, coming up with ideas, writing, editing, and saying inappropriate things.  Ok... not sure if the last thing is a huge selling point, but I my speech is not muted by fear of ridicule.

My education is in the food industry, operations management, and food science, so I feel I should try to incorporate that into my career.  The 2 directions I come up with is R&D and marketing. Both are what I consider creative careers. I like thinking about possibilities, brainstorming... meeting, I love meetings.  I like environments where I can display my thoughts on a particular subject.  

When I watch shows like All In with Chris Hayes, I imagine myself on the panel, adding my two cents to whatever is going on in the world.  Of course, that seems a lot less likely.  The point is that I like to think about an issue and offer my analysis or solutions. As far as that goes, I don't have a preference between doing product development or proofreading a weekly grocery ad.

GREAT NEWS!!!  I have hit the amount of money I set out to raise - $1,040!  That amount is what I need to cover December and January rent.  It was a colossal effort that has left me very emotionally drained.  I was raised(mostly) on a hog farm, living in an old farm house with a wood burning furnace and no indoor plumbing, so asking for help is not very easy for me.  

I honestly don't know how politicians maintain sufficient guile to continually fundraise.  

A big thanks to the following for RT'ing my tweets:

Chris Hayes - Being mentioned on his show was huge.

Ed Schultz  -  Many RT's came from his followers.

Keith Olbermann - Honestly, nobody increased my page views more from a single retweet. That man is a force of nature. MSNBC should regret losing him.

Lawrence O'Donnell - Big fan of his. His RT garnered page hits and much respect.

Ana Marie Cox - Not only did she RT, but she donated as well. Someone get her a show! My cat, Ms. Teschmacher thanks you...

Tracy Clayton a.k.a. @BrokeyMcPoverty

My next step is to call up the building manager, Rick, and see if he'll stop the eviction if I give him all the rent.  If not, I'll have to take the money I raised, and scramble to find another apartment.

Last special thanks to my great friend, Shane Chaney.  We grew up in the same town and now live 1 street away in the Clifton neighborhood in Cincinnati.  He has bought more dinners for me than I can count, and thanks to him simply being there, I have maintained my sanity.  He also loaned me the money for November's rent, which I hope to pay back sooner than later.  

Shane is an accomplished freelance Audio/Video engineer who can think fast on his feet, direct, and consult on anything from home theater set up to coordinating sound/video for a major convention. 

If you need someone that fits that description, please look him up.

Thanks to everyone.  I'll update you all with what the building guy says later.