My current situation isn't funny, but it is laughable. I'm a freelance journalist who used to have a day job as a publicist. I got "furloughed" in June. Actually, two weeks prior to my layoff, I filed for unemployment and told my former employer that I considered myself de jure unemployed because he had paid me late for the past six months. At that time I hadn't been paid for my prior two weeks work and it was three weeks later.

My unemployment claim was rejected because I have another employer: myself. It's not funny, but as I said it is laughable, because the money I make freelancing doesn’t cover my rent every month let alone my bills. I live modestly in an inexpensive studio apartment in Flatbush Brooklyn. I accumulate few material possessions and don't shop for clothes --or much of anything --very often, only out of necessity. I don't impulse buy, or spend money on sweets like cupcakes or chocolate or vices like cigarettes or booze. I do get my hair cut every few months, which I think is pretty fair since I wear it short and it really needs clipping every four weeks to look as chic as I would like. I got a mani-pedi last month for my sister's wedding, but I don't indulge in that luxury regularly though I wish I could.

I know the country--and world-- is in a financial crisis even though some high-level government official on TV said a few weeks ago the recession is over. At least that’s what I heard—I don’t have a television. But, that doesn’t mean anything to me or dozens of my lesbian and feminist friends and acquaintances, particularly in NYC, who are struggling to get by. I feel like I need to chronicle my trials and travails--and triumphs-- to preserve this time in herstroy: A lesbian-feminist’s attempt to support herself in a depression that is not a recession that is not over and probably won't be for a long, long time.

I know U.S. society is premised on the heterosexual, nuclear and dual-income family (well, modern day version). But lesbians have always been at a disadvantage--we have only ourselves to support us, we can't get married --or haven’t been able to until recently-- and as an anti-assimiationalist I never want to. So, making our own way in what is still a man's world is not easy, especially when women still make 67 cents for every dollar a man makes. And, lesbians make less that straight women and Black women make less than white women and so on and so forth.

More on next page...

\\\

(continued)

It's the beginning of October, I'm over drafted by over a 1,500 bucks. My rent bill arrived the end of last month and I have no clue how to pay the rent because I have only $38.37 in my online bank account. Yesterday I applied for a no interest, open-ended loan for my October rent from a writers union I belong to. It will take 2-3 weeks to find out whether I am granted this loan, at which time I will pay my October rent or tell my landlord I simply don’t have the dough. At that time I will again wonder where next month’s rent is coming from. Today I also got a gig cleaning apartments for $15 an hour. I have a four hour shift this week, to see if I work out. It may turn into a semi-regular thing. Its honest work and I welcome some physical movement in a job, but this is not what I imagined my life would be at age 46 when I graduated from either undergrad or law school.

I’m going to pen a weekly chronicle of, as I mentioned, my trials and travails and triumphs as I wander through 2009-into-2010 depression-era USA with little-to-no financial resources. It might be a bit sad, yes, but mostly I aim to find the humor in the horribleness of it all.

Find more from Stephanie here!