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Living in poverty

 

November 23 2013

I'm not going to play the X things you don't know about me game that is currently very popular on social networks right now, but I am going to mention one thing you probably do not know about me:

For two years, I supported myself working restaurants, often times working two jobs at the same time. I had no car, so relied on a combination of a bicycle (multiple bicycles, actually, because one broke down and another was stolen) and public transportation to get around. When, one week, the buses stopped running because of a strike, I had to bicycle two hours to and from work and one day was so weak I almost fainted on the job.

Getting a job at the local gas station was a step up. Yeah, sure, I had to work graveyard two days of the week, which made going to college at the same time impossible, but it was steady 40 hour week work with steady pay. I was finally able to start saving up money for a car.

The way I got out of that cycle was by spending my free time on the then-Internet and learning enough about computers to get a job at a dot-com. I got my break when I met Sean Lynch who was having lunch with my friend Hope Esperanza one day; Sean helped me get my first middle class job and out of the cycle of poverty.

Not everyone is as lucky as I was. Here is a story of one woman who has to work two jobs just to make ends meet.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/why-poor-peoples-bad-decisions-make-perfect-sense_b_4326233.html
Edit: Updated link to Huffpost version of article which better compensates the author

The above photo was taken by my friend Amy Ihde

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