Reality, part one.

Wah, wah, wah…oh woe is me.

I don’t know if anyone remembers Save Karyn.

Some of you may have already seen my rant on this topic when it was fresh news, but its been a while.

She was a high-earner living in the Big Apple, with a lavish lifestyle.
There was an economic downturn, and she got the pink slip. In denial, she continued to live the lavish lifestyle until she was $20,000 in debt.

She created an online journal where she chronicled the daily struggle of learning to live like regular folk do…

• Not cabbing everywhere, but rather riding public transportation.
• Instead of buying a really really expensive short sweater, cropping down down a really really expensive longer sweater until it was the appropriate short length.
• Bringing a salad from home for lunch wherein lurked wilted lettuce, which she ate.
• The clever idea of drinking and socializing with her friends at home, instead of going out to bars and restaurants.
• Hosting the gatherings and having other people bring comestibles and drinkables, so she doesn’t have to spend money to entertain.
• Taking extra bottles of wine left from her gatherings to gatherings hosted by others, thus saving the expense of a bottle of wine, and still being a good guest.
• …

You get the idea.

Sympathetic people sent her gift certificates for food and gave her monetary donations to help her out.


From her end, she sold a bunch of her designer wordly goods on eBay to pay the debt off.

Then she went on talk shows to talk about her website, wrote a book about the whole experience, went on more talk shows to discuss the book, and had the book option for a movie by Sony Pictures.

I don’t know if the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic has any connection to Karyn, but she seems to at least have been an inspiring jumping-off point for the writers.

This whole thing was brought to mind today, because while I was rooting around in my closet looking for summer-weight pants that aren’t black, denim, or way too small, I rediscovered an old denim skirt I haven’t worn for years.

Lately, I have been bemoaning the fact that the word skirt is apparently the street-name for low-slung frilly belts.

This skirt did actually have a denim ruffle around the bottom, which was easily removed, so I now have another piece of summer clothing. However, unlike Karyn, I merely transformed a $12.99 skirt from Target into a $19.99 skirt from Target. But I digress…

In Iowa City, Kristen lived relatively comfortably - okay pay, no major debts, a nice place to live, a nice car to drive, and a full tummy, a little savings In the bank.

Then this starry-eyed dreamer saved up $5000, which after expenses - rent/deposit, furniture, utilities - was about $3200, and moved to Chicago, secure in the knowledge that she had a job waiting for her with the same company, a place to live, a nice car to drive, and the beginnings of a wonderful new life.

The new life included such wonders as: a hit-and-run accident the 5th day she lived in town, which cost a $500 deductible to fix, a 32-hour a week job paying $7/hr, and a much higher cost of living.

Despite shortly starting a better paying job, she continued to live the lavish lifestyle she had in Iowa, and credit card bills started to accumulate.

Jobs changed, pay decreased, sanity increased, and bills continued to pile up. Kristen had to get a new car because hers was tainted with mold and cost more to fix that it was worth. Eventually, she owed around $25000 to Toyota financial services and various credit card companies.

Then the job ended, the income ended, and the bills continued to mount, as well as regular living expenses. Thanks to a generous and kind loan from Mom, she was able to eke out a living doing hair on the side while the job search began…

It sounds so much better in the third person.

Reality, part two.

These days, I find myself in an untenable financial situation.

I have a job, working at a nice private salon, where the boss is great, and I have almost limitless possibilities for growth… if we had a clientele. People come in here and there, and I do have my own clients, but they are few compared to the availability I have open on my schedule.

I have worked at all of the commercial salons available in this city - I won’t do Supercuts, Fantastic Sams or Great Clips. I can’t stand behind a chair everyday doing 20 $8 haircuts on the unwashed masses.

The pay is shitty, the stylists that work there are generally unintelligent, unskilled bitches, and the environment isn’t conducive to positive mental or physical health.

I know it is a job, and it is in my field, but those chains are concerned with quantity over quality, something that is the diametrical opposite of my work ethic.

Imagine Rick Bayless working at Taco Bell, or Bobby Flay working at Burger King.

I have been searching for a second job doing anything, and I have discovered that I am unqualified to do about everything. In those formative years where young people work in bars and restaurants, do internships, and generally develop a varied skillset, I already had a vocation and career doing hair.

In this job market, in Chicago, hell - in general, experience is required. I am not qualfied to bus tables, much less work in an office or specialty store of some kind.

I applied at over 30 salons after I left the HC, and only two deigned to interview me. I also applied for at least twice as many non-salon positions, with nary a call-back. I ended up working at Asha, but I was never a good fit with that place.

The people that work there tend to go out to cocktails after work with their girlfriends, wearing 5-inch stilettos, sexy designer clothing. They spend their income on fripperies and doodads.

I always felt like an outsider and a second-class citizen, never quite in on anything, and not really worthy or anyone’s time.

The pay was also shitty - they grossly misrepresented the facts and figures when I was hired and then lied about it to my face when I called them on it, they are most assuredly are violating federal minimum wage standards, they really don’t support new staff at all, and I was miserably unhappy.

Unfortunately, unless you walk into a lucky situation with pre-existing salon clients, you don’t make a lot of money. And it can take 6 months to 2 years to really have a solid client-base and a fat paycheck.

The salon where I work is a newer salon, starting out with a teensy established clientele, in a location that has largely been ignored by anyone but the employees of the hospital across the street. Someday we will own the people at that hospital. But for now we settle for the slow build.