Every two weeks, my mother and I drove down the 787 highway to the Greyhound bus terminal, located on the border of Albany and Rensselaer, aka the Saddest Little Place on Earth.
Which is where, every two weeks, we’d pick up my father.
This was not the most glamorous period of my family’s life. My father lived in a communal apartment in Chinatown. He worked in a textile factory, filled wall-to-wall with needles and machines that punched holed in things, but not a lot of light.
He got one day off a week. He saved these up until he had a total of two, and then would visit his family.
My mother worked full-time as a state employee, and also cooked for, dressed, and looked over the schoolwork of her four children. In her spare time, she chauffeured us around to dentist appointments, piano lessons, and soccer practices.
We got into this situation because we overextended ourselves financially on stupid bullshit that did not matter. The “Now-You-Know” I took from this was:
Don’t Do That
It was a pretty extreme life lesson: there’s a gulf of a difference between failing after a calculated business risk… and failing because you want to fill your life with bling bling and status and the lifestyle you think others have.
10-Year Career Jump… Backwards
Eventually, my father moved back to Albany.
He decided to get back into the restaurant business. He pulled himself together, he reached out to his network, perfected his resume, and started getting interviews.
Then… Nothing.
Radio silence. For months.
He could have waited for the phone calls to come. He could have postured and preened and made a stink about any number of things: the economy, the job market, his ethnicity, that no one could get past his accent and see the value he offered.
Instead, he took all the experience he got from opening and running two restaurants (the first of which he opened when he was 24), he gathered all that knowledge and expertise and business acumen…
He put on his best shirt and tie…
He walked down Sand Creek Road, onto the strip called Wolf Road, littered with more restaurant chains than a Suburban Hell, and knocked on doors until he got a job…
Waiting tables.
He took a took a 10-year career step backwards.
That’s what he needed to do to help support his family.
As Tim Grahl put it in his interview with Srinivas Rao, you have to be “willing to dig ditches in the hot sun if that’s what it takes to provide for [the] family.”
When Clients Cry Poor
Today, when clients cry poor, it’s hard for me to sympathize.
When a Client emails, cajoling and begging for a loan against future royalties because the landlord is knocking on the door, it’s hard to sympathize.
When a Client asks that we don’t take a commission, because they need that ten percent or the 7.5% to keep the lights on, it’s hard to look at them the same way.
Especially when a Client has the the audacity to turn around and hide behind their family and say, “this is how I provide for my family! This is the only way! You’re taking food from my table!
You are a grown person.
STFU and Go Provide
The same type of client will blame their agent if they can’t line up jobs. Or if a book isn’t selling, they’ll blame the publisher. “Why aren’t you pushing my name harder? Why aren’t you marketing it more?”
Maybe the agent could. Maybe the publisher should.
But it’s this eagerness to shrug off any sense of responsibility over the current situation that’s infuriating.
If you’re a grown person, if you have a family to support, find a way to provide.
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Photo Credit: Chris JL
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