low income=low self esteem

It’s about value and worth. Buy, acquire, make, sell. My self worth is dictated by how much money I make per hour, by my lowly dreams, and by my car and watch. 60k job interviews that lead to letters of apology and let downs are like high school rejections and I was never rejected in high school. I dated the cutest girl in my class and now I’m not ready for this new validation system. I’m the new guy in the corner at the dance, milking his glass of punch watching all the happy couples dance and play.

I have no job. I quit teaching and my Cognitive Science degree from MIT, although the college nerd equivalent of the high school starting line-up, now makes me over qualified for the 7 dollar an hour barista positions and under-experienced for the 60k managerial roles and so I’m stuck fighting in hearings for unemployment, feeling my sense of self worth, before now always defined by success, dwindling down to a pimply teenie bopper/state school drop out status (my apologies to all the pimply teens and state school drop outs). Maybe all that is left for ms is the little pool of academia, where my now stale credentials will give me enough “puff” to scare away the bigger fish. Welcome to the mid-twenties. And I thought high school was tough.