It is 9:24 PM and here I am still working. I have 3 more websites to update before I can call it a night; but I don’t think I will manage to get them all updated because I’m starting to become mentally tired and once the mind starts to go, insane things can happen.

I just checked my earnings for the day. I literally made $1.96 today. Gasp. You no doubt find it unimaginable to work 14 hours for $1.96. It’s totally ridiculous. And by work I don’t mean sitting here twiddling my thumbs. My days are spent developing and managing websites, a job which entails PHP/HTML/MYSQL programming, web designing (I am the first to admit I am not the best web designer there is, but I can hardly afford to hire professionals to handle the design aspect for me so I have to do it myself), learning the hard way how not to antagonize Google with my efforts at search engine optimization, researching, data entry, writing; and each of these tasks is pretty much a full-time job in itself. I have to do all of the above for all of the websites I own; and then there are the sites that I manage for clients that from time to time need a new script developed or something updated.

The point here is, I have more work to do every day than any single person should have to handle, and something always gets carried over into the following day; but where money is concerned, what I generally get out of working 16 hours makes me look certifiable to anyone who would analyze my situation. They would ask, why in the world are you doing this? Why don’t you just get a job? I mean, one dollar and ninety-six cents? That’s what you made today? And you’ve worked 14 hours and still determined to go at least 2 more? Are you crazy? Why are you doing this?

The obvious answer is, I’m trying to make money, and yes, I know, I’m not making any money, and it’s been a while since I’ve been trying. But that’s not really what I set out to talk about. I wanted to make an observation about lack of money and how the reality of not having money impacts on physical appearance. Obviously, people who don’t have money are usually under a great deal of stress. Life isn’t usually a day at the beach when you have to worry about money. You get grumpy, and when you get grumpy you scowl and when you scowl your face wrinkles up. You also don’t usually have the time to take care of yourself physically. When you’re poor you have to work harder to try to break even, and you don’t usually have a flexible job in an office on Park Avenue or the equivalent of Park Avenue in whatever city you live in. The jobs held by the poor are usually menial, and menial jobs are usually tasking. They take a toll on the body and the mind.

I am of course in a position such that I work from home and I work for myself. It would seem as if I have the freedom to decide not to work if I so choose, or not to work nearly as hard as I do; but in reality I have to work harder and for longer hours than I would have to work if I’d had a regular job. I often look worn out, tired, sleep deprived and at times older than my 36 years. Poverty does that. Poverty ages you. Poverty takes away your options. You can’t go to the South of France for a relaxing 2-week vacation when you’re poor. Admittedly you probably can’t do that even while living at the middle income level. When you don’t have money to buy yourself time to relax with, you age faster and you generally experience less joy. And joy is necessary to keep you looking and feeling young.

It is Tuesday morning, July 17 2007. My significant other has the day off. For me this means a day of frustration automatically. Being poor is an unpleasant experience made all the worse when you add marriage to the mix. Marriage is supposed to improve an individual’s financial situation by combining the incomes of both parties involved. I hardly make any money running my own business, yet I make more money than my partner who works a regular job. However, I have only myself to fault for that.

I married for the wrong reasons. I chose a partner based on emotion. I never asked the questions I should have asked. What difference does it make that my partner didn’t graduate High School? That’s what you more likely would have heard from me. Lack of education doesn’t equal worthlessness! And I still maintain the same; but when you don’t have the education, you do need something else to fall back on. Many celebrities only completed High School. Some didn’t even complete high school; but they are multimillionaires, so they stand as proof that you can still succeed in life with little "formal" education if you have something else to capitalize on; but if you have no marketable talent on top of having little formal education, if you have no specialized skill in any field, you can’t hope to get very far in life financially.

My partner is the type who is limited to the types of jobs available to persons who choose to dedicate their life to the pursuit of vice while others are busy obtaining an education or cultivating a skill. The significance of that point was lost on me when I became involved in the relationship, not only in the reality that such jobs for which my partner qualifies usually pay at or near minimum wage; but also in the reality that such persons cannot be depended upon to hold a job for very long. In the 10 years I have lacked the courage to sever the ties that bind me in a ridiculously mismatched relationship, my partner has never worked an entire year at the same job.

I suppose if someone had sat me down and explained to me why it’s important to have set of requirements for prospective mates before I would consider getting involved in a long term relationship with them I would not have listened because I wasn’t the type to be practical about love. I completely lacked, and shamefully still do lack, emotional intelligence, which I suppose is where my partner and I are on the same level. And as you can imagine, two emotionally impaired individuals in a relationship together, well it needs no detailed accounting of events to paint a picture of what our marriage has been.

Here you have one individual living with social phobia and depression, trying to run a business under constant mental strain and stress, never really being able to guarantee income from one month to another, paired with an individual who works for $8.00 an hour, bringing in around $300 every 2 weeks. No doubt you can’t identify with such a pitiful situation yourself. Somehow I have managed to this point to get my bills paid. I’ve had marginal success with some of my many websites and have been able to scrape together just enough to keep the roof over my head and the utilities and to eat; but a couple of months ago, an emergency forced me to sell those websites that were bringing in a little money, so I’m now without any concrete, steady means of income.

Dealing with the reality of having no money and no reliable means for making money is hardly easy. It’s usually depressing around here. I spend up to 16 hours per day working, trying to turn nothing into something. And as you can imagine, it’s a miraculous feat in itself to turn nothing into something. To hope to be able to do it consistently is to hope for much; but the alternative is not really an alternative for more than just the fact that I’m a social misfit. I’ll admit I don’t want to work for anyone. I’ll admit that I’ll regard it my biggest failure when I am forced to take a regular job to avoid becoming homeless.

Note: This is an excerpt from a book in development