My 1st day.

Today was my first day of work. I've had lots of first days of work, but this one was different then the rest. Today was the first day on a job that functions as my sole income. No help from the parents, no college loans available, some government assistance but that's only because I'm in poverty. How much in poverty? Technically, according to the government, I make $0 annually. I'm a "volunteer" for Americorps VISTA, and I get a living stipend of $830 a month (that's poverty level + 5%), soon to be augmented by $150 in food stamps. (Skip ahead at this point to avoid boring math). My apartment costs $385 a month, so that brings me down to $445 a month. I'm hoping all groceries are covered by food stamps--if I can work that out, so food doesn't really bring me down much. I'm assuming about $150 for water, electricity, and cable internet--electricity will be expensive due to the constant AC (welcome to the South). That gives me a monthly budget of $295, if I did my math right. Shit, I forgot cell phone...$245. Lets say $50 in gas, even with a good bus service, so that puts me at $195 a month in spending money. If I ever want to visit home, a plane ticket, round trip, costs about 180. If I save $75 a month, I can come home about every 10 weeks. That means I have about $120 a month.

So that'll be a change from my past life style.

In all I'm really excited though. I have these really idealist, naive thoughts about the world, and how it should be ran, who should run it (me), and so on. For the most part those in power forget, if they ever knew, what its like to be an average person. I think feeling what its like to be much below average may make it stick in my head a little longer than average. I'll also be in a unique position of trying to alleviate poverty while living in those same conditions. Imagine if politicians had to live in the same conditions of those people whose laws they pass affect negatively? Before you can pass a law, say, denying children under the age of 10 healthcare, your children must live 2 years without you being able to provide for their physical well being.

Anyway...

About my job. I'll be working through VISTA with the College of Charleston, getting their Community Service segment of their Service Learning office off the ground. What that means is that I'll be identifying community needs, making community contacts with organizations that need help, and recruiting college students to volunteer. I'll be helping to "alleviate poverty" (VISTA's goal), more indirectly than many others, but I think the work I'll be doing will help me in pursuing a career in nonprofit work. My co-VISTA seems really friendly, and one of the office workers and her roommates are awesome. Let's see if I can start to make some connections here.

Most interesting fact of my life so far, at least to describe it:

My roommates are two women who met working at a coyote ugly type bar, one is a former lesbian surfer (currently surfer, former lesbian) and the other a professional body builder. That said they are two of the most completely normal, cool people I've met. But to describe them that way makes my life sound like an awesome fucking sitcom.

That's all for my first post.

-N

Oh yeah. The Dark Knight fucking rocked.