[FUCKED INTENSIFIES]

Stories on when the hamster wheel becomes a whirl of blades.

Readers,

This hamster is falling into the meat grinder. You can get some backstory on my downward odyssey here:

The Hamster and the Wheel

It’s my most read essay, so I’m guessing it resonated with many.

On with the shitshow,

—C

---

Pushed away, I'm pulled toward
A comedown of revolving doors
Every warning we ignored
Drifting in from distant shores
The wind presents a change of course
A second reckoning of sorts
We were wasted, waiting for
A comedown of revolving doors

—Metric, Speed the Collapse

My rent check has bounced. In hindsight, I should have just paid late. It would have been cheaper.

My finances are ridiculously tight and tightening. I was counting on payment for work already completed to coincide with the check clearing but it didn’t come through. I knew it was going to be risky, but I based my gamble on previous payment timing from this client. Now my bank is charging me $30. My subsidized housing is charging me a $25 returned check fee and a $50 late fee.

Now I’m in a financial hole. It’s fucking depressing. You have no money? Well shame on you, now you owe even more! The despair of powerlessness, of owing others a debit or penalty when you’re already struggling, is cruel. The blame and punishment is always hung on personal fault because faulting the increasingly extractive system in which we live is high treason.

Bootstraps! Grit! Drive! Adopt a winner’s mindset!

I’ve been navigating a completely self-employed life for the past year. I work as a handyman and as event support for bicycle races. The handyman work is sporadic and the event support is seasonal, but I was making it work. Always barely.

It happens to be time to re-certify for the housing too. I think the “making it work” has come to an end. There is a land known as Too Poor and I have arrived. This means I’m going to lose the subsidized housing. This is a mortal wound because subsidized housing is impossible to find.

Is it time for Adventures in Unhousing? Maybe!

Time to Help

One of the true joys of being self-employed has been having control of my time, even though it comes at the cost of predictability and security. I get to choose how much and how long I work, and to who I offer my labor. Often I can choose the date and time I work too. I have time to devote to writing. It is true freedom that also allows me to help family and friends when their needs are urgent.

There is a lot of urgency and emergency about, if you haven’t noticed.

Helping others feeds my soul. Being able to give an unconditional and unconstrained “yes” when asked for help by friends and family, especially at a moment’s notice, means to be in service of others and that creates belonging and meaning. It feels damn good.

Sometimes I am paid, but it’s because they know my situation and choose to, not because they must. We live in a darkly transactional and consequential culture so to live in defiance of it tastes all the sweeter.

What are we all going to do as living here in the U.S. turns more cruel and harsh? How can I help others if I’m struggling to survive too?

Credit: Adam Ellis

The Politics of Family

Our families are reflections of the world we live in.

Who among us comes from a close family mostly free of inherited dysfunction, coercion, social disconnection, and stratification? It sounds great. I have no experience with such a thing. It’s a fable. I’ve always yearned to experience what it would be like. I thought I might marry into one, but the family turned out to be far worse.

Alas, we do the best with what we have. Or not, I guess.

My family ties are far from the worst examples, but we aren’t very close. We just weren’t brought up that way. There was a lot of chaos and control sprinkled with abuse and neglect. It’s hard to gage how much or severe because it was our normality, but any amount is destructive to trust and belonging.

It’s easier to discount the trespasses and wounds.

Being the sibling with the most fractured of origins, I’ve always felt astray. I’m half-blood to all my familial connections. Some I’m closer to than others. Some I have no relationship with whatsoever. Even my relationship with my own son has its difficulties and limitations.

My familial relationships are burdened by layers of alienation.

Blended families, absent parents, significant sibling age gaps and income disparities, clashing political and ideological perspectives, poverty, addiction, abuse, divorce, betrayal, abandonment, relocation, judgement, competition, superiority, resentment—all these and more haunt families.

Mine is no exception.

I worry because the world is growing more dangerous by the day. Risk is escalating fast. Collapse is unfolding on multiple fronts while the framework of our country becomes openly antagonistic and unreliable. Denial, indifference, and selfish preservation eat at our souls.

We’ve forgotten and abandoned and rejected to be each other’s keepers—so ingrained we are to achieve and compete and hoard. Even when embraced, the effort feels stunted and hamstrung. How did it come to this?

My vulnerabilities are numerous and worsening. Safety and trust are becoming myth. If not already, you will soon feel the chill too. The henhouse is teeming with mobster foxes picking bloodied feathers out of their teeth. Unless you’re one of them, you’re on the menu.

Some of my biological family have helped me when I needed it. I was able to survive the first couple of COVID years because of one sister’s ability and generosity. But being an alienated family member means friends become an adoptive family. A family of friends. I’ve got friends looking out for me and I have a sense of acceptance and trust with them that is elusive in my familial relationships. It’s bittersweet.

I’m not sure what’s next for me or for all of us but it’s getting really dark. We better start looking out for each other.

The Circus of Deferring

I do not carry any debt. After my losses during the Great Recession, I vowed to never let banks screw me over again. I could have built my credit score back up easily, but I was not going to be trapped and robbed by debt again.

Have you tried to live without access to credit? I dare you to try! I’ve been doing it since 2010. If you refused debt, what would you have to forfeit? Your house? Your car? Your business? Vacations? It gives new meaning to “living within your means,” which is pure fantasy unless you’re already wealthy. Credit is purposely necessary for most, a point of leverage and a tool for exploitation for the wealthy.

When unexpected and/or large expenses arrive, the juggling act begins. What can I put off? A utility bill? How much tread on my car’s tires do I really need? How far can I stretch this food? Do I actually need to see a dentist, which quizzically requires separate insurance unavailable to me? Is two times a year overkill? How about a visit once every other year? How about never?

Have you ever paid for dental services without insurance? X-rays are $$$. Dentists love x-rays. Mine refuses care because I refuse the x-rays. I’ve been with this dentist since 1990. So much for loyalty.

Welcome to my refrigerator. The cupboards are spacious too!

The only area I do not have to worry about is medical coverage—which, as you know, for all kinds of fucked reasons is a huge expense for the majority. I’m poor enough to qualify for subsidized coverage. I did the math back in 2014, and it would be easier for me to qualify for subsidized medical coverage than finding a job with excellent medical coverage and a livable wage.

I need excellent medical coverage because my son is a T1 diabetic, which means he requires insulin to live. His medical expenses would be financially devastating otherwise. So I deferred chasing the employment unicorn so my son could have the best medical coverage I could provide with certainty.

Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t.

Now it looks like Medicare will be eliminated, or severely cut at best. I will not be able to protect my son from mortal peril any longer. I’ve tried to prepare him for what’s coming but his mother doesn’t believe the Trump administration will do such a thing, even as they eagerly dismantle social programs. She and her boyfriend are avid supporters of Trump and it’s impossible to break through the delusion.

I carry a lot of regret and shame that I failed to thin my son’s exposure to their distorted influence. I gave it my best shot, but capitalism decided otherwise.

I worry constantly that he will not have access to insulin in the near future. The Trump administration wants to remove protections for preexisting conditions. They want to remove parental coverage for adult children. It will mean he will be denied care. What happens when the economy crashes and he can not find work? How will he get medical coverage then? It will be a death sentence.

The Shame and Terror of Asking for Help

I have a hard time asking for help. I think a lot of us do.

We’ve been brainwashed to maintain a sense of egotistic independence that is corrosive to very heart of what it means to be human. To need help means one is failing. Weak. Lazy. A burden. Offered help is a hall of humiliations and conditionality. Accepted help requires one to live with a sword dangling over their head. It’s sadistic. Why do we punish those with no power and excuse the powerful?

Now the language is turning to something beyond independence: “sovereignty.” The government by the people and for the people, scrapped and privatized. You thought you were on your own before? Just wait.

I don’t know how we get out of this but it will require solidarity. Capitalism divides and isolates. Late capitalism means to make the concentration of power absolute. We will have to refuse and starve it and that will mean sacrifice. It will mean prolonged boycotts and disinvestment. A general strike would bring the powerful to their knees. Then we might have a chance to imagine something new.

Will we come together and fight for a livable future or will we continue to worship the false prophet of rugged individualism while robber barons and transnational gangsters pillage the temple?

It’s time to fall on swords. It’s time to embrace risk. It’s time to put it all on the line. It’s time for mutual aid. The world we’ve been taught to strive for and exalt is a fairy tale. Saving face and gains at the sacrifice of our future leads to no winners at all.

Tick tock.

---

Thanks for reading. If you have resources to spare, click the “tip jar” below (it goes to my PayPal account). I could really use it right now. I’m fooked.