Awkward moments

As I explained in a previous post, the bulk of the pay scale for non-union Extra work is above minimum wage but not by much. I am hugely fortunate to be supported by Bob.  Many of the people doing BG work freely talk about their financial struggles and how they are cobbling their earnings from BG work with other low paying jobs.  Many are barely making ends meet.  Lots of stories of being laid off, spouse illnesses that caught them without good insurance and left them with huge medical bills, a baby on the way, etc. Others use the flexibility of this work to support their primary artistic passion:  photography, music, painting, etc.   None of which is making them much money at this point in their careers.  NYC is a very expensive city to live in.  I know people live here on relatively marginal incomes because either they really want to be here or they can’t scrape enough together to make a move elsewhere.  

The conversations can be rather awkward for me, as that is just not the case for me.  More than anything, I am doing this for the fun of it, it’s a lark, an adventure, a new way to experience NYC.  I can walk away tomorrow and think nothing of the loss of income.  Despite not practicing Catholicism for decades, having been raised Catholic, I still carry a lot of guilt for my easy life knowing others are barely keeping it together. I obviously never fully engage in these exchanges about personal finances. I just go silent when it is kind of my turn to say something in the conversation.  I don’t know what the other person thinks of me but it can’t be worse than if I were to reveal that I am a comfortably kept woman doing Extra work for pocket change or that I just like the challenge of it to see if I can eventually parlay this work into a small fortune. It makes me feel like I’m taking food out of their mouths.  Some of these people are really hurting.  It’s not like I can just walk away or sit somewhere else once we start going down this track……it’s often the case that we are paired or put into small groups on the set where we are stationed for up to a couple of hours.  You can’t go anywhere until there is a break.  Sometimes I just stand there looking at my feet while two of my colleagues talk money saving tips or other flexible jobs they’ve heard of.   I try to be polite and empathic but that only goes so far in a 2 to 3 hour grouping.

I do often wonder if the BG job I accept simply because it would be fun for me to see some actor I really like is taking seriously needed income from someone else.  I don’t like that feeling.  I know that me not taking that job does not equate to a person in need getting it but I still stop and think about it.  I know I could divert all these hours I put into Extra work doing volunteer work and helping others.  II’t’s just that I did that for two years and now I want to do this for a while and that should be okay.  I’m still doing my recycling project for my food coop membership and am very involved in seva for my Amma group.  It’s not like I’ve totally abandoned humanity for the lure of celebrity.  Obviously, I’m still trying to work this out in my head.  One of the other main reasons I want to generate extra income is that I keep myself on a very short spending leash.  Bob and I have an ambitious plan for saving while he is making good money and my nature is to save anyway or always be on the look out for a good deal.  I hate paying full price for anything.  But I digress. To get back to the topic at hand, I want to feel a bit more freed up to spend money in ways I don’t now. One thing I really want to do be able to do is carry a steady stream of twenties and when I come upon a canner give them a twenty (canner is the term used to refer to people who go through all the garbage and pull out cans and bottles with redemption value—usually 5 cents to the bottle or can—HBO has a really great documentary on these folks).  Those people work hard for their money.  It looks like back breaking dirty work—always bent over piles of bagged garbage pulling out item by item.  I have see this old Asian woman who carries her enormous loads on the ends of a bamboo stick straddled across her shoulders.  Or a very old scraggly guy pushing his shopping cart with a pile so high he has to look to the side to steer his cart.  I just want to be able to go up to them and give them a twenty and tell them to take a few hours off. It exhausts me just to watch them go about their business for a few minutes or haul around their loads. Twenty bucks is the equivalent of 400 cans/bottles.  I have so much respect for those people.  So that is what I tell myself I will do once I clear all my expenses and start making a profit.  It helps ME anyway to be more okay with how I am now spending my time.