Supposedly today is Earth Day. I understand the recycling and trying to protect the environment thing, but I don't understand the extremists who worship the earth as a god and are willing to save the planet at the expense of their own species.
I've been stuck for the last 3 months in the NYC homeless system. My first 3 weeks were at a "Drop-in" center in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Unlike city shelters, drop-in centers refuse to provide beds for their clients. They use chairs. 3 weeks of attempting to sleep in chairs and the back problems as a result of sleeping in chairs led to me entering the city's shelter system. I've spent over 10 weeks in that nightmare, with dozens of rejected job applications, the forced sale of my car, and the HRA/Public Assistance nightmare driving me to the brink of insanity.
I'm supposed to hear from my last outstanding job application tomorrow. The pay is minimum wage (although NYC's new minimum wage of $13 an hour is higher than anything I've ever earned before). But I see no point of staying in NYC and wasting away in the shelter system if I can't find work. I'd argue that unemployment has gone up here precisely because of the new minimum wage. And even that's not enough to keep up with the rents, with SROs now renting for far more than my last apartment in Maine.
I don't know if those fancy resumes, those sessions at the writer's workshop where I managed to start on a decent short story, or all that free medical care that proved that I still have asthma (and managed to prove and disprove that I had serious liver problems), I don't know if any of it was worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment