Dearest Anna Lisa Kristina,
10% less.They call it a furlough. A way to minimize costs.
Times likes these, these tiems we live in, everyone holding, no one sending, no circulation, no stimulation, just a bunch of millions of individual pockets of inactivity, fear-based life, in times like these, it makes me wonder if I should cutely kidnap you and move us to Canada.
They called an emergency meeting on a Thursday. Now emergency to me doesn’t mean celebration. I gathered it wasn’t a meeting to announce everyone movign up on rung on the company ladder equalling pay and benefits. Emergency meeting meant something bad was going to happen.
The executive director looked solemn. Could have been how he rehearsed it the night before in front of his two sink bathroom mirror, with the easy nozzle shower head bath tub, and the low energy flush toilet, right next to the his and hers embroidered towels. Which is why I call it rehearsed.
He went on for about twenty minutes explaining how our company, a widely recognized culturally based non-profit in the big city of Los Angeles, has also been hit with this economic recession. Setting up the inevitable implementation of company strategy to cope. Tenuous and taut minutes crawled by while all I could do was think, “If I get fired, where can I go?”
“Everyone.” He sighed. “What we’re going to do is ask ourselves to take a 10% reduction in work.”
He called it a furlough. Where we reduce our hours as way to reduce our pay. Legally they can’t ask us to take a reduction in pay per hour, but they can ask us to take a reduction in hours. Hence, furlough. Hence, 10% reduction across the board.
“We’re asking this of everyone. Myself, the admin, the managers, and the front line staff.”
When I heard that, I was releived. No one was fired.
But as he continued on with explanations and expectations and charts and logic models and crap like that, I started thinking, 10% of what I make now means 10% of how I’ve been living.
That means 10% less food. 10% less gas in my car. 10% less distance I can travel. 10% less lights and computer on in the apartment. 10% less cigarettes and alcohol. 10% less condoms. 10% less washing clothes and drying. 10% less everything.
That means 10% less happiness. Because, Sweety, I’m very happy right now. With everything I’m doing in my life. I am a Normal, California resident finally. Paying bills, rent, credit cards, driving legally, and working a regular job. Everything I wasn’t just five years ago. Five years ago I was miserable. Because I wasn’t part of the reality going on around me. But now, I am, and all of a sudden, i’m asked to reduce that participation by 10%.
Some motherfucker can easily say, “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” And I would agree. But after I knocked out that birkenstock sandal wearing, Obama bumper sticker sporting, incense burning, Dan Brown reading, organic juice drinking idiot, I’d look through his wallet and see what kinds of credit cards he has, what kind of health insurance he has, and what kind of savings account he has, and then think to myself, “Yeah. Money doesn’t buy happiness. But money sure makes happiness easier to find.”
The days of eating top ramen forever are done. No more couch surfing because I had no home. No more walking 40 miles across the Greater Los Angeles area. No more once a week showers because the power was turned off. Fuck that. I was miserable. And I’m not even completely certain my spirit and soul were fed living like that because my stomach growled so loud I probably couldn’t hear it. So fuck that. We need money. It’s hypocritical to think otherwise. And stupid to believe it.
I know, right? Me saying this. It’s the shit you’ve been telling me for ten years. The shit I never listened to. The shit you would fruitlessly try to grind into me while I was busy dancing around you. Turns out you were right all along, Love. I should listen to you more.
Now, don’t get me wrong. 10% is not the end of the world. 10% after all is only 10%. I can adjust. But the thing I fear is that 10% can easily turn to 20% and then 30% and then 50%. And there will come a time when people begin to realize they used to live at 100% and by then it might be too late to do anything about it.
I’m glad i’m in this The Writers Workshop. I get to say shit like this. Writing is one of the only places left for truth. Now I hope as the months go by I don’t burn too many bridges because what we need now, more than anything, is premeptive action. Not reactive.
Holy fuck, Kris. I’ve gone and went on to fifteen different tangents. And I’m not that bad ass of a writer to tie them altogether in one last paragraph. So I’ll just end it here with that observation absolving me of all the literary mistakes I’ve commited thus far in this letter.
The adventure begins.
Love,
Xavier
great writing