This time, I felt my poverty coming on, like an orgasm, or a sneeze.

...Um, except, poverty really sucks, and orgasms are great.

...Like...a freight...train?

Never mind. I'll stop with the tortured analogy.

It started in December. I was working for MegaCorp as a 'contractor' -- basically, a glorified, high-paid temp. MegaCorp paid me a regular salary plus benefits, and then hired me out to MegaBank at an ungodly markup. Even after factoring in my benefits, MegaCorp made as much as 70% profit on me. Meanwhile, I was supposed to feel grateful because, in return for exploitation, unexciting benefits, and no overtime pay, I was managing to just eek out a decent middle-class salary. Still, I had health insurance, and the knowledge that if I got laid off, I would make an ok amount on unemployment. "Finally!" I thought. "I have a safety net! Even if I lose my job now, I'll still be ok for long enough to find a new one! If I lose my job, I won't be poor! My compromises and lack of time to work on music are paying off!"

Um.

Here's my definition of middle class vs. poor. "Middle class" is when you can pay the front-loaded costs you need to pay, that keep you from getting poorer. You can pay the doctor bill, that keeps you from having to go to the ER later. You can pay for a security deposit, and that means you can sign a year's lease, and not get gouged paying rent month-to-month. Etc.

"Poor," therefore, is when you can't pay for those things, and, for lack of that smaller amount of money, end up owing a much larger amount in the end. So, "poor" is not how much money you have now, but how likely it is that in the future, due to your current situation, you will have even less.

Poor is also, I think, when you start making decisions about whether and when to go to the doctor based on your health insurance. And yes, by my definition, a lot of America is poor right now. (They're just poor with cable. But health insurance for a family of four is thousands of dollars a year, well beyond the reach of many...so, as long as you can't afford to be middle class, you might as well be able to watch Sex and the City once in a while. )

Anyway, back from the generalized poverty to my own...In December, I got a letter in the mail from MegaCorp's Corporate HR. "We're simplifying your health benefits with this new, improved"...Dammit. My "simplification" worked like this: From January 1st on, I would be on a high-deductible health plan. How high? $2100 a year. Now, since I see a shrink, and since I've been having regular problems with an ovarian cyst, and might possibly need surgery...the question was not if I would go through that deductible, but rather...how on earth would I deal with a $2100 extra expense? Immediately, I began thinking about finding a new job. But in the meantime, I would have to postpone getting surgery next year, at least until I found a new job.

Poor.

I needed to find a new job, but meanwhile, my current job was taking up all of my time. The project I was on went into crunch time. We all worked long hours, weekends, etc. I worked such long hours that I couldn't get the 6-month follow-up ultrasound on my cyst done before the end of the year. I worked such long hours that I ended up sick at home for a week with a terrible flu.

Poor.

What was frustrating about this, though, was that many of the hours were completely unnecessary. Someone high up would decide it would be "nice" for the QA team to be at work, and lo, it was done. New Year's Day fell on a Saturday, and we were at work at 8am after a full week of work already -- only to do nothing for the whole entire day.

How, I wondered, did I get here? To a point where I'm coming into work on a Saturday, for no reason at all? I thought about how, in the good old days, jobs like mine might have been covered by overtime. Managers would have thought long and hard before paying..what, triple overtime? (over 40 hours + weekend + holiday). And, if our time was being wasted, we would have at least had the triple overtime to comfort us. But no; I was salaried, and I felt I was having less and less say over the hours I worked. I worked long hours, and was grateful for them, because they were better than no hours at all. If I came in on Saturday, I just might have the opportunity to come in on Sunday!

Poor.

What has happened to the "good enough" job? What has happened to working as a secretary, so that you can have health benefits and make enough to cover your rent, while you write your screenplay/go to grad school/raise your kids? All I wanted, last year when I was looking for a job, was a decent nothing little job that paid $35k a year. What I found were nothing jobs that paid $20-$25k per year...which are poverty wages. I found $25k jobs, and $45k jobs -- but the $45k jobs were 'career' jobs, with hours and expectations and demands to match. Even though, in the grand scheme of things, $45k? Really not that much.

But there it was, the divide, pure as I could see: poverty jobs, and middle class jobs that require poverty work, and nothing in between. So I took the latter, and crossed my fingers.

But I got laid off. I thought, though, that after working 10 months straight at a decent wage, my unemployment would be...decent. Decent enough for me to have 2-3 months before I had to start panicking.

...Oh well. wrong about that, too.