Joshua W. (name changed to protect privacy) used to make six figures from his books on surfing. He also worked for a few years as a newspaper reporter and he's taught middle school English. It's been a while since his last gig. Schools and newspapers aren't hiring, and now the savings are gone. In his late fifties, Joshua is married with several children, the youngest of whom is 18 months old. The family lives in a middle class residential neighborhood. Although his wife works full time, they can barely meet their monthly expenses. "There's no health insurance, so you have to play your relatives, call the one who cares about teeth and ask for help with dentist bills for the kids. I haven't gone to the dentist in four years. Our daughter loses things. Kids do that. This winter she lost a couple of coats. Two years ago, we would have just bought her a new one and moved on. Now we have to sit her down and say, 'you can't do that, we don't have the money to throw around, ' and give her consequences, and now our 12-year old daughter has to feel stressed out about being poor." Sometimes I think, you know, I came to Los Angeles to follow my bliss, to express myself, because my father spent his whole life in corporate America, grinding away in a grey suit, and we never saw him. I wasn't going to be like him. Now I wish maybe I had been more of a grey suit myself, gotten a real job. I followed my bliss off a cliff."
Posted by Christopher Davidson on 01/28/10
