I was a child of about nine, when one night my father overheard me talking in my sleep. It was so peculiar, he told me afterward. You were talking about getting a job, and you seemed quite anxious. I tried to encourage you to speak more on the subject, but you weren’t responsive.
I don’t remember the dream, but I’ve often thought back to that conversation with my father. It’s occurred to me that my nine-year-old self − who was completely unconcerned with employment in her waking life – may have slipped out of time and into her future as a chronically underemployed person – a person who lacked the privilege of thinking about much else beyond employment.
I graduated from university into a recession and have been underemployed ever since. In addition to this, I had been a magazine journalism major, and my entire field was about to dissolve. In addition to that, I soon discovered my personal politics had not set me up to fit easily into any for-profit company. For the 23 years since, I’ve been underemployed, primarily as an independent contractor. As such, and along with many others at this time, I’ve developed a perspective on life heavily influenced by underemployment.
“Since then, I’ve noticed the work that tends to bring me the greatest financial reward is work I’m not formally trained to do. It’s as if this “outside of the society” fingerprint impacts me at the multilevel.”
One of the defining effects of underemployment is a lack of money. As anyone without it will affirm, money has far-reaching impacts on a person. In this regard, there’s no aspect of my life that’s remained untouched by my chronically underemployed status. Thus underemployment has been a theme in much of my writing: from journalism and creative nonfiction to communications copy and poetry.
After decades of experiencing the effects of underemployment in everything from the homes I’ve lived in – often inner city communes with other underemployed young people – to my choice in boyfriends – couch-surfers and other residents of said houses back in my 20s and 30s – I might even ask myself: who would I be, if I were not underemployed?
Who indeed. Back in my 20s when I was in a particularly acute period of underemployment, my sister, who has an intuitive bent, informed me I had taken a vow of poverty in a previous life. Apparently, I had vowed to remain poor until the poorest of the earth had adequate funding! At 28, and in my current incarnation, I was eager to break the vow and pay my utility bill, but how? I began to wonder where the source of my underemployment could be found.
Again and again, I’ve had the privilege of answering for myself the question of “if you only had $10 (or $50 or $100 – you fill in the blank) left, how would you spend it?” When I was 29 and having the early mid-life crisis sometimes referred to as as the “Saturn Return”, I answered that question by spending it on a women’s weekend retreat led by a sort of urban shaman . The shaman spent some time with me, and in addressing my underemployment challenge, suggested that rather than being a typical member of the society, I could be a powerful contributor to the society. The concept stuck. Yeah, I thought, that, I can do.
Since then, I’ve noticed the work that tends to bring me the greatest financial reward is work I’m not formally trained to do. It’s as if this “outside of the society” fingerprint impacts me at the multilevel. My best examples are editing and massage.
In university, two kind friends who worked at Toronto’s Maclean’s magazine took some paternal interest in my writing. They would take me to a local café, buy me bottles of Allen’s apple juice, go over my articles, and provide feedback and comments. This, and what I have taught myself over the years, was my primary education in editing – often one of my surest sources of income.
In my early 30s I took a hiatus from writing (read: being underemployed as a writer) and studied shiatsu therapy and other energy work modalities. In my subsequent work at a spa – which included one of my highest grossing years, at around 22 grand – I earned the bulk of my living doing relaxation massage with oil – a skill I taught myself in about ten minutes after scoring a substitute gig at the Hotel Vancouver some years earlier.
Between underemployment and what’s seemed at times like arbitrary employment, life hasn’t allowed me to get too caught up in my ego. Instead, life has provided me with an ongoing puzzle I must contemplate, not unlike a Buddhist koan – those riddles that monks and other meditators sit with for hours and years until enlightenment strikes. The puzzle is how to create material wealth, the currency that fuels life on this planet.
The question has taken me on the journey of my lifetime. From journalism to teaching, from contract editing to alternative therapy, I have underemployably pursued my survival. The same question has also guided my inner journey.
Without getting too The Secret on you, I will say that for me, the connection between our inner lives/processes and our experience in the outer world is deep-rooted. The link is psychological: think positively, and you’ll be more open to opportunity when it arises. It is also magical: envision positively, and you’ll support the creation of positive experience by planting images in the unseen realms, where they germinate before appearing in ours. It is a complex recipe involving both the psyche and the unseen, and I am actively seeking both the directions and exact ingredients.
Thus, at this point in my underemployment odyssey, my strategy is two-fold. Listen very closely to my inner-self – my sense of “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.”.Then use that information and any related thoughts, images, and feelings, to take action in the world. As a younger woman I was likely to barrel forth on new plans without a second thought, guns blazing, but now I’m more inclined to nurse a concept and run it through my emotional radar before releasing it into the world.
I’m not convinced we choose our life’s obsessions. I believe we are individuals, but also products of our time and place. I did not choose to spend a lifetime meditating upon work, money, and the lack of it. I did choose to spend a lifetime writing, and we tend to write about what we know. I have a visceral and daily understanding of underemployment – it has been a relentless truth for me since I entered adulthood − and whether treated lightly or with gravity, the theme burns through my life’s work.
Marni Norwich is a writer/editor and complementary therapist with her businesses, vancouverwritingcourses.com and vancouverpetreiki.com. She’s also a poet (Wildflowers at my doorstep, Karma Press, 2008).
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