I'm not made of money. Or muscles.

Do you find yourself more generous around the holidays? When bell ringers stop you as you leave Target, do you tell the truth and slip a buck or two in their pot instead of lying about only having a credit card? Will hungry families feast on cans of creamed corn as far as the eye can see while you dust out your pantry? Do you become a walking tax haven for vagrants in your community?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you’re like most of us comfortable Americans who find their cups of cheer a bit fuller this time of year. And then there are those folks who really shine in the wintertime. Those who put new meaning towards the notion of hunting season. I’m talking, of course, about crooks.

Their prey? Us.

I was fortunate enough to celebrate Pearl Harbor weekend in Des Moines, Iowa, for the wedding of two dear friends. As a new North Carolinian, I’m getting ready to celebrate my first winter in the Old North State and I’ve been told by countless natives that it doesn’t snow much out here. So when the white stuff came down in Des Moines, I caught a bit of the Christmas bug. I said “Good day” to a beggar. Then apologized for only having a credit card in my wallet. I was saluted with my own bell ringing, after tipping extra at a favorite old bar. I hugged, high-fived and wrote my name in the snow, thanks to several pints of Guinness and a few shots of bourbon. And then this wonderful ceremony, reunion and bar crawl all rolled into one came to a very bittersweet end. After a few flights, I was happy though to be back in my cozy North Carolina home.

Until the following morning, when I checked my bank account online.

“What the hell is bodybuilding.com, and who the hell spent $263.82 on there!?” A thought worthy of an interrobang if there ever was one. Expecting to find a couple dozen less-than-$10 transactions from the weekend, you can imagine my shock at seeing such a surprising figure. It was an open bar at the wedding reception, but was I really that drunk that I forgot about buying a round of human growth hormone for my buddies at the bar? Shock quickly progressed to consternation, as I realized my credit (debit) card number had fallen victim to some wily Iowa meathead.

If only I had given that kindhearted hobo a dollar bill, maybe karma wouldn’t have bench pressed my bank account.

To many of you, $263 dollars doesn’t sound like the end of the world, but if this is the first entry you’ve read on my blog, let me get you up to speed. I don’t make much money. I can be crass. I can be boorish. If you know me personally, I can be a real asshole. But I can’t pretend to be affluent, or even very comfortable. Losing that much money, even though the bank ended up giving it all back, put things into perspective for me. I’m glad I had that much in my account to begin with. But if you took three quarters from a guy who only had a dollar to his name, you’re really shattering his bank. And there are countless many across America who only have about that in their pockets.

I may not have much, but I’m thankful to have a Christmas tree instead of having to sleep under one.

So the next time you walk out of your favorite store, actually, before you even walk into the place, make sure you have some spare change to drop in that red kettle. If you’re giving away creamed corn, at least give away the name brand stuff. And if you encounter a homeless person, run the other way. Because honestly, they’re almost always insane, drunk, stoned or all of the above. Instead, write a check for charity and make sure your money goes to someone who’s stuck in a shitty situation but is trying hard to better himself.

And no matter how much money you have in the bank, for the love of God find something better to spend $263 on than bodybuilding supplements. Everyone laughs at you people in the gym.

A very prosperous, a very appreciative and a very Merry Christmas to all.

An underemployed workaholic.

Let me start by saying I’m well aware that one entry a month is not the recipe for a successful blog. It’s definitely not enough to increase readership or even hold on to my existing readers. Well maybe it is, since my existing readers are mainly family members (love you guys!) and close friends (like you guys!). So for the rest of you unknowns, I offer my apologies and a promise to work harder and write for free more often.

I promise that in part because I designed new business cards for myself, and that fancy square on the back leads potential clients somewhere very important. Scan it for yourself and see. Here’s a sneak peek:

I wish I could blame a busy schedule on my lack of recent activity away from the computer. As some of you know I accepted a municipal job and assumed my freelance work would become supplemental income. As it turns out, my municipal job is supplementing my freelance work. They wouldn’t call it “freelancing” if everyone made a fortune at it. It’s a grind and the hours you spend searching for more work typically outpace the hours you spend actually working. We freelancers can trace our title to Sir Walter Scott, who first coined the expression in his novel Ivanhoe to describe unbound mercenaries who pledged their allegiances to nobility for a fee. How proud Scott, himself a writer for hire, would be to see us modern day word warriors eking out a living. Many days I might prefer to impale myself on a lance. If I could afford one, anyway.

Getting back to this city job, I was and still am excited at its potential, don’t get me wrong. However, it is definitely not what I expected. My city, like communities across our nation, is struggling to stay in the black and balance its checkbook. And like communities across our nation, it has been forced to make cuts to do so. And what, pray tell, do you think gets cut in the winter months? Park resources, park hours and of course, park payrolls. After a month my hours are fewer and farther between. There is always hope my hard work will leave a good impression on those that sign – or at least approve – the checkbooks, but “part-time” has really just become a synonym for underemployed. And what do you get when you have an underemployed workaholic? One hell of a missed opportunity for previous hiring managers who passed up the chance to interview that candidate.

But who has honestly ever met an overachiever who works in human resources?

Underemployment is something we’re simply supposed to settle for. Underemployed Americans help lower the unemployment rate, which doesn’t matter now that the election is over. And hey, at least we’re working, right? I drive 25 minutes to get to my job. For the amount of gasoline I’m buying to drive an extra hour a day to and from a very part-time job, I’d probably be just as well off being unemployed and not driving anywhere. The only difference between unemployment and underemployment, it seems, is that little “der.” Which is like “duh.” Or “doy.” Basically, we hard- and hardly-working Americans are supposed to say, “Duh, no shit having a job is better than not having a job.”

 

Driving through my city to work I laugh at that notion when I look around. Why am I stuck in traffic at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday? At 1:45 p.m. on a Thursday? These people stuck in front and behind me clearly aren’t full-time employees. I hate traffic, but I’d be content being stuck in it if it were actually rush hour and I had a salary to drive to.

So is underemployment a step in the right direction? Perhaps. Is it better than no employment? In my case, yes it is, because I like where I’m at even if I’m only there a few hours a week. Will I stay here forever?

Ask me again in the springtime.