I’ve been wearing my broke-ness on my sleeve more and more. I’m coming to realize that budgeting and frugal living really is the ‘cool’ new trend. I will say that its been a hard realization that life after college is not the glitz and glamour that it was cracked up to be. There are two great things to this: 1. EVERYONE is struggling. I’m sure even Donatella Versace is thinking that she needs to cut back on the Cristal purchases until more people can start buying her clothes in the boutique rather than the outlet store. 2. I’ve found it more enjoyable to swap bargains with people than to try to keep up with the Jones’. Instead of “Well, I just bought the most amazing bag at Neiman Marcus” I get my kicks with, “Yeah? So I paid $1.78 for gas.”
I will say that I’ve been justifying my showing-up fellow bargain hunters as a means of erasing the image that I had worked hard throughout college to create. I’ve never been a fan of knock offs, but lately I’ve been feeling like the biggest knock off of all. I find myself shouting from the mountain tops, “Hey! I didn’t pay full price for these pants!” I don’t want people to see the remnants of a better economy that I still hold on to and judge me.
While watching Inside the Actors Studio last night, Dave Chappelle said that being a well-off black man was like wearing a really nice sweater that itched like hell, and you can’t take it off. Nowadays, I think anyone that has any form of cash, stock, or 401(k) left is feeling that way. Even if you don’t but look like you do, you feel the heavy eyes on as you walk about with your façade. How do you walk into the grocery store with a designer handbag, pull out your VISA to swipe, and hold your breath hoping that the transaction goes through? How do you drive your German engineered car into your driveway and avoid the mailbox because you know there is a letter from bank about your mortgage in there?
I hear about the terrible economy, and though I know I’m not too far from a cardboard sign and a median in the street, I still can count my blessings. Its so easy to get wrapped up in one’s own problems these days that its hard to remember how well some of us still have it. At work the other day, a coworker said that one of her friends went from making six figures to working a job at the local Publix. The first thing that popped in my head was that he was lucky to have a job. Though it might not be the most glamorous, some money is better than no money at all. I see all of my friends taking jobs that one might not deem suitable for a college graduate, but these are not the times to be picky. I’ve been fortunate to have survived two waves of layoffs where I work, one included the laying off of the woman that hired me. I’m still holding my breath.
I’m currently reading American Psycho. Its not the gruesome torture and mutilation murder scenes that Ellis has so eloquently crafted that makes me squirm. Its more the pitiful way that the characters of the book interact with those less fortunate than themselves in the novel. I know the point that Ellis is making about yuppie culture, and I know he goes above and beyond far past the point of overkill because that’s the whole idea of it. It still hits a little too close to home, like the time I saw a clean-shaven man wearing jeans and a collared shirt asking for money on the corner of Semoran and Aloma about two months ago. It was like that picture that everyone associates with the Great Depression. For me, it was a man who looked just like my father who will forever symbolize these times we’re living in. Though it still makes me cry to think him, I have to keep hopeful and give thanks for what I have.
