Hey,
My working life has been rough.
I spent the better part of a decade, starting at age 17, working retail customer service. I struggled in those jobs; for a variety of reasons, only a few of which were within my ability to control. I went to college— at age 24— in part because I knew there was no future for me in retail, and that if I wanted to, you know, eat and stuff, I needed a new plan.
So I went to art school in my mid-20s, hoping that it would set me up, at the very least, for some white color job that I wouldn’t completely hate. The 2008 financial crisis hit near the beginning of my second year in school, so those modest dreams evaporated quickly.
But I also learned in my time there that a few problems I dealt with in retail were following me into my new career in… digital media? Academia? I couldn’t tell you for sure.
What I can tell you is that I was strongly advised— some might say bullied— into changing majors halfway through undergrad because too many of my colleagues refused to work with me on group projects. (I was a Game Design major, and making video games is really hard to do by yourself.) I was passed over for a web developer position at the school newspaper for “culture fit” reasons. (I found out later it was because of my weight.) The teachers who made a point to mentor students in my department conspicuously declined to work with me in that capacity. I graduated with no real career prospects besides an offer for a graduate program, for reasons that were largely unrelated to the quality of my work.
I took that offer for a spot in an MFA program. I lasted less than a year. As it turns out, being so deep in depression that you can’t get out of bed for several months can have a detrimental affect on your work.
I left grad school. Soon after that I was homeless. I couldn’t work even if I wanted to.
When I finally got a regular place to stay— I would’t exactly call it a home, but it was off the streets— I tried to get back to work. And I soon discovered that I was functionally unemployable.
I got into freelance writing mostly for that reason. I was broke, and recently homeless, and I needed money. Nobody wanted to give me a job. So I went and made my own.
I didn’t plan on getting into sports journalism— I just sort of fell into it. I sent out feelers and pitches, and soccer writing pitches were the first ones to yield actual money and opportunities, and eventually that just became my job. That fact always fed into my impostor syndrome; I knew people who were busting their ass to get even a sliver of the success that I garnered largely by accident.
Even so, the past few years were tough. I would pitch outlets I knew I could deliver good work for and never got responses. I’ve been laid off twice. I applied for a staff position at a major outlet that would’ve paid me an actual living wage to do this work; I got really far into the application process before they finally just stopped responding to my emails.
Finally, things hit the fan within the past couple of months. At Christmas, I had three stable writing gigs. One month later, I was down to one. One gig I left voluntarily, with my departure announced many months in advance. The other was a lay-off at a publication that is in the process of shutting down.
I spent six years trying to make a career in soccer writing work, and I haven’t yet. At times it still feels like I haven’t really broken in. Meanwhile, all I have to show for my work right now are poverty wages and an informal blacklist kept by people who won’t entertain pitches from, uh, people like me.
I’ve spent most of my adult life feeling like I was too broken for adult life. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a way to survive capitalism, because I was always going to be a bad culture fit everywhere I went. All of my old insecurities came flooding back, and I had to find a way to power through it; not just for my own sake, but because I’m currently trying to build a life with a woman I love, and I literally could not afford to let this derail that.
I try very hard to be aware of my personal limitations and how they bump up against a world that has been largely hostile toward me, even before I came out as trans. I keep those limitations in mind not to weigh myself down, but to be able to name the problems I have to work around. Yet, try as I might, I can’t always help that awareness translating into creeping despair. It’s too tempting to look at the difficult road and decide that it’s actually just impassable.
Overcoming that despair is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in the past year and change. But I have to do it. Not least because it pays off sometimes.
It’s certainly paying off now. A couple weeks ago I was offered a position at a local LGBTQ community health clinic, and I accepted. My first day is tomorrow.
(Incidentally: my first full week at the new job will end on my 37th birthday.)
This is my first actual, fill-out-a-W4-form kind of job in almost 11 years. It’s also my first since I started transitioning— which means I now have to try to navigate the working world as a woman.
I’m scared that I’m going to screw this up. I’m scared that I’ve been out of the mainstream labor force for so long that I won’t know what to do or how to act. I’m scared that everything people used to say about me behind my back is actually true and it’s going to start happening at this new job as well. I’m scared that I’m going to try my best and that it will never, ever be enough. I’m scared this will blow up in my face and then I won’t know what to do next.
I’m scared. Well and truly scared.
And I’m going to try and do it anyway.
Take care,
Bridget
