Sari Botton

 

Sari Botton October 2013

Ever since I've known Sari, she's had a million jobs, all of them related to writing. She writes for the New York Times. She ghost writes books. She's edited story collections (one of them, “Goodbye To All That,” a collection of writers' essays about loving and leaving New York City, is currently selling briskly). She is a co-founder and editorial director of The TMI Project, a non-profit dedicated to helping people write (and sometimes perform or publish) their stories. But I wondered – were these varied projects hers by choice, or by necessity?

I like being freelance. That's my nature. I like to have a few balls in the air. But I've had to have more balls in the air than I want because of the economy. I'm just going to confess: I just barely get by. And I do so much hard work. I have a two thirds time job as editorial director of The TMI Project. I've edited two anthologies this year and I've done a bunch of ghost writing, too, on top of it. I'm currently deeply editing someone's book, and with all of that, I don't know if I'll ever get in front of the eight ball.

Her husband is self-employed, too, so neither of them has a steady income they can count on.

We're both up in the air. This year his New York City gig ended. We've been in upstate New York for eight years and for most of that time he commuted two days a week to Rockefeller Center and a couple of other locations to do IT for law firms. But it just stopped making sense so it wound down and it's done, and he's now trying to figure out how to make this (his storefront computer repair business) work and support him. At the moment we're just eking by, even though we're so busy. Trying to find that balance of how much you can pay people, how much you can charge people, how many people you can have working at once. It's a real challenge. So both of us at the same time are in a financially challenged place and it's very, very stressful.

We've toyed with renting out a part of our house. I mean, how do you stay afloat in this economy? 

One point this year we almost rented out our whole house, but we weren't ready for that. So what are the other ways you can stay afloat? Plus I think back in 2005 when we bought our house, a lot of people were going with that rule of thumb “Buy the most house you can afford.” And now we're stuck with a lot of house and not a lot of ability to afford it. And I don't think that people are buying the big houses that they were and we're kind of kicking ourselves, wishing we'd bought something that was an income property, or was smaller....it's a tough time. It's a really tough time.

And it's expensive to live in New York, even upstate.

That's the surprising thing. People come up from NYC to visit and they think it's really cheap here and it's not. We're finding it's not much cheaper: we had low rent in New York and when it got tripled we had to leave. You pay for heating oil which you don't when you rent an apartment in New York City. You need not one car but two – because it's really important to be able to get around. The hidden expenses are just astounding. When we sit down and add it up, we find it's not really much cheaper to live here. And taxes, too – car repairs, house repairs. We have a bunch of credit card debt because we got caught by car repair bills at a time when Brian and I are both struggling.

What about health care?

Oh that, too! We have insurance through the Freelancers Union. But it's not great, though it's good to have. We each have a $3000 deductible and a high prescription deductible. A couple of years ago I was an adjunct at SUNY Albany, mainly so I could get really great insurance. I hada major operation and our bill was only $71! But my entire salary was going to gas and tolls, so no matter how I try to balance I'm always behind the eight ball.

I was also marveling - it's really true that we are the first generation that will have less than our parents. I can't imagine a day when we'll be able to afford to retire. Can you?

No. I've totally given that up.

We're considering liquidating what little IRA's we do have if things don't work out in the next few months. We were feeling ashamed and scared and then we talked to our friends and they're in exactly the same boat. We have friends who have already liquidated our IRAs. We don't have any money in it, anyway. And we don't even have kids! How do people do it if they have kids? I don't know how people do it today.

The cost of living keeps going up and what I do as a writer and editor keeps getting de-valued. The money I am offered for ghostwriting projects gets smaller and smaller because more and more journalists are doing it;  you can't make any money at journalism anymore. 

Has this ever happened in history before? Where the cost of living goes up but not wages? Don't they usually go hand in hand?

Doesn't it feel like we're at this huge shift? And I don't know where it's going.

Unfortunately,it feels like something awful has to happen – where everything breaks down so we have to start over again. Some awful storm so no one can pay their mortgages -it's going to take something that will make the people with the money suffer. They're not going to want anything to change. There are no penalties for the banks because they're too big to fail. Unfortunately, it feels like something that could make them fail has to happen so that they are at the table with us.

Maybe We've Got Too Few Hats

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

How many times were you asked that when you were a child? And how many different answers did you give?

I was thinking about this as I read comments to my post on our overworked American nurses...thinking that it's a shame that people who are drawn to a demanding career, one which requires a certain personality, are then burned out with long hours, heavy schedules and demands that they do more with less.

That sent me down a mental sideroad and I wondered: why did we have to pick just one field?

I know the practical answers; there is training to gain expertise, there is experience which is invaluable. These are things which only come from spending time doing something, learning better ways to do it, seeing problems that crop up over and over again and figuring out how to avoid them. It makes sense.

But why just one thing? Why not just pick a theme?

It's our civilization's way: figure out what you want to do, then spend a lifetime getting better at it. Before the industrial age, there were apprentices. They learned blacksmithing or silversmithing, they apprenticed at money houses and trading companies or with healers and surgeons. It took years to get good at their specialty.

We've continued the one career style with college training, internships, young people who "climb the career ladder." And it was okay for a long time; if you were good at your job, you stayed on that ladder, often with the same employer, for your entire career.

Times have changed. I saw my dad hop from job to job and finally get bounced from a major corporation because, despite the fact that he was the best in his field, he was over fifty. He wasn't high enough on the ladder to overcome ageism.

He reinvented himself; an incredibly brave move that I didn't fully appreciate at the time. He and my mother put everything they had into running franchises they bought from one of the corporations he'd once worked for. It was a success and a failure - they made more money than he'd ever made in his career and they loved running their own business, but an economic downturn ended up drowning them and forcing them to sell.

I have always believed that was more because of my dad's personality than a reflection of the wisdom of taking the risk they took or their abilities. Dad could be abrasive, so when times were tough and he needed a little slack, he seldom got it. But his theme was business - understanding what factors were necessary to weight the odds toward success.

They ended up worrying far more than they should have had to at their ages, but they finally worked out a comfortable retirement.

My guy has done a million jobs to make ends meet and probably excelled at all of them, as that's what he does. But his theme is music. It's always been about making room in his life to create music. He knew what he wanted before he graduated high school and he's never wavered. I admire that.

What if we asked ourselves what our theme is, instead of what we want "to be"?

I've been a TV reporter, a teacher, a writer and a radio journalist. I've been a freelance PR consultant, a retail clerk and a massage therapist. I've cleaned horse stalls and organized files. My earnings history, according to the social security records, is pretty sad. But I have had a range of experiences and a chance to learn what I like to do and what I'm good at.

My overall career theme has been communications and my astrological inclinations predicted that. But if you'd asked eighteen year old me what I wanted to "be", I'd have told you "I want to own a local newspaper." I saw a romance in that that I will admit still lingers with me. But I also now know the daily ins and outs of it and am less inclined to want to do it. I have stuck with journalism, but done it in different media.

Fifty two year old me wants to be a writer, though I'm conflicted about that, too.

I'd have been a great nurse, but I'd have burned out in six months. I take everything personally. I'd have been a lousy surgeon. I might have been a lawyer but I suspect I'd have been bored stiff before I passed the exams. I'd love to have been an architect but my math skills are non-existent. I'd have been a great veterinarian but suspect I'd have soon turned my clinic into a shelter. I love to rehab old homes, rescue derelict buildings. I love farms, animals and people's stories.

How was I supposed to choose just one career? How does anyone? And why do we have to?



Thoreau proposed that we turn the current system upside down; let young people wander the world and get a sense of what they want, then let them work until they no longer can. Retirement, he believed, was counterproductive for older people who wanted to stay active and useful, while young people desperately need that time before being pressured into choosing a career that could prove to be a colossal mistake in the long run.

I like that.

So here's my proposal: let's restructure our work lives. After college (which everyone should attend if they're interested in something other than a trade), young people should have ten years to wander. Yes, they should work. They should be doing the low-paying jobs, the jobs that require no commitment. There should be a living minimum wage so they can work around the country, around the world, and figure out what interests them. There should be hostels for them in every city, places where they can live independently for low rent. One year of that time should be spent in service - either domestically or abroad.

At age thirty, time to settle down, start your career. That's when most young people get serious about their lives, anyway. Many will choose their road sooner, settle down, have a family. That's okay. They've had the freedom to choose and the space to make that choice. The rest will join them at age thirty. The system is set up to enforce that - no more hostels. Maybe even age restrictions on minimum wage jobs. Time to enter the skilled labor force as a trainee or with the skills acquired during this hiatus.

Age sixty five? Keep going if you want to. Why do we have to retire? We've had elderly presidents, elderly CEOs. If you choose retirement, there should be health care and a healthy social security benefit. But if you choose to work, there should be options that make that attractive. How about flex time? Four day work weeks?
Sweeten the pot to make older, experienced workers interested in staying and sharing their experience with the new workers. Team them up, create a mentoring program within every company.

I just read that 40 is the new 50 in the business world. In other words, at forty, you're old and the young bucks are driving you out. Stupid stupid stupid.

We're doing it wrong and we're doing it wrong all over the world.

When I get my turn at the presidential lottery (in my world, every citizen must serve in political office for one term, and may volunteer to serve one term in higher offices), that's how I'm going to do it.