Over breakfast, I’ve been perusing Forbe’s list of the most influential women in media.  I keep thinking, wow, another news anchor.  Another morning show co-host.  Another…cooking channel sweetheart turned television goddess.  It isn’t a list of the most influential women in media, it’s a list of the most influential women on TV.

Here’s why: the list is generated based on money, fame, audience, and power.  Money?  When did media become about money?  Around the same time it became about the brigade of sleek blondes sharing banter with square-jawed, loose-tounged anchormen in front of a camera.  I have an antiquated sense of “media”.  That it’s about information, provoking thought (or at least, in its own, roundabout way, encouraging it), reaching out, using the world as a playground.  I still think Thomas Friedman was on to something when he wrote about journalists needing to become “information arbiters”, people who don’t create the news but gather it, digest it, and then present it.

Silly me.  Clearly what really matters is money and fame.  This is a culture of celebrity worship, after all.  So I salute all the writers, bloggers, and journalists who did make it onto the list, in spite of it all.  I’m particularly pleased to see Dooce on the list–a first-time entry, renowned for her sarcastic and unabashadly honest approach to blogging about family life.  She’s a neat 26 on the list, not bad for someone who’s literally built a life for herself, her husband, and her children based, when it comes down to it, on writing.  Part of me wants to be jealous of her, but most of me rejoices in the idea that this is, in spite of what it may look like (and indeed what Forbes may have us believe), not an impossible dream.

Dooce (aka Heather Armstrong) on the realities of her livelihood:

“There are days where I sit there and cry myself into a bundle in the corner because either I am blocked and can’t write or there is nothing to write about. I don’t ever get to take a break or go on vacation. If I don’t write for two days in a row, people write to ask if I’m dead.”

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Just as I was finishing up yesterday’s post, the Man came upstairs into the study and said, “I want to read you something that will make you feel much better about our finances.”  He then sat down on the bed and read me this article, from the Guardian Saturday magazine.  It’s a long and excruciating tale of financial and personal meltdown, and I won’t go into great detail (yet), but the idea is this: Edmund Andrews, experienced economics reporter for the New York Times, finds himself, at the age of 48, in a bit, but not much, of a pickle.  Recently divorced, and engaged to Patty, another divorcee, he’s paying his ex-wife $4000 a month in alimony and child support, leaving him, he says “just $2,777 a month to live on.”

The Man and I exchanged a glance–if either of us had close to $3000 a month to live on we’d be beyond thrilled, but then again, we don’t have kids or years of living comfortably already behind us–and then he carried on.  Patty is a mother of four, and Andrews gets his two children at weekends, so they decide that in spite of Andrews own doubts about his financial situation and Patty’s current unemployment, they should…buy a house!  Because that’s what adults in these situations do, apparently.  Look at the price tag ($480,000, in this case), realise they’ll never be able to afford it, and then go ahead and buy it anyway.  In Andrews’ case, buying the house involved a mortgage loan officer and a few interesting snags–carrying too much debt in spite of his $130,00 salary because of a second mortgage, under his name though his ex-wife was responsible for the payments–and the assumption that Andrews would be able to refinance because the value of his house would be higher in five years.

So there he is, digging this hole.  A few months later he goes to the ATM and discovers he’s got just $196 (his allegation that “we didn’t have enough cash to cover more than a week’s worth of shopping” did puzzle the Man and I for some time–even for a family of four it seems a little extravagent to drop $200 a week on groceries), and thus begins a long few years where he and Patty spiral into debt, maxing out every credit card they can get their paws on until they owe $50,000 “in credit card debt alone.”

And so here they are, now.  Still struggling along–”I have no idea when I might be able to get credit again,” writes Andrews, “much less retire.”  He claims it hasn’t been a total loss, that having the house was good for his family, that he and Patty are as close as ever.  And at least he’s got a book out of it, which will presumably appeal to millions of credit-starved hole-diggers and victims of economic downturn alike.  And as an economics reporter he has a better handle on the situation in its wider context than most.

But I can’t help but feel a little sick reading the story.  The Man was right, at least: it did make me feel better about our own, often precarious financial situation.  Student loans aside, neither of us is in deep debt, and I berate myself when I go more than £10 into overdraft on any given month–say, £20 into overdraft.  Recently I found myself mired in credit card debt, which my parents were thankfully able to help me out of.  But I didn’t borrow the $15,000 that Andrews had to from his family–my bill was for $600.  Andrews would probably laugh at us, and our pathetic little money worries.

So I have to suppose it’s about scale: someone used to earning upwards of $100,000 a year has a completely different idea of how things work than someone who literally lives paycheck to paycheck.  The middle-aged high earner has lost all sense of what it’s like to really economize.  It’s been so long since things were stripped down to their essence, since it was survival and not luxury which mattered, that it’s impossible to revert to that primitive way of life.  Or maybe the kinds of people who find themselves $50,000 in debt at the age of 50 never lived paycheck to paycheck.  Maybe that’s the problem.  Maybe it’s the downside to landing yourself a solid and dependable job straight out of college.  If all you’ve ever known is security, how can you make yourself think differently?

Make no mistake, the Man and I are not in an enviable financial position, but there are things about the way we comport ourselves during these lean years that make me think it’s a temporary position, and that, in fact, our having struggled as we do will ultimately turn out to be a good thing.

Because I’d like to think that even if we find ourselves struggling, twenty or thirty years down the line, with kids and needs that extend beyond eating, drinking, sleeping, and being together, we’d know when–and, more importantly, how–to stop.  Living on the edge of financial ruin–and surviving–has been an enormous experience for me.  I grew up in the lap of relative luxury.  I never thought, let alone worried, about money.  (Especially as a university student, that classically tight time, when I was earning an income from part-time jobs in addition to the allowance my parents gave me, and didn’t pay a single bill.)  But it’s been good for me to find myself where I am now, and the Man and I have mostly been alright.  I have a hard time imagining that should we come up against serious financial hardship later in life, we wouldn’t be able to sacrifice everything, just as we have now, in order to avoid descending into that dark place that Andrews and his wife find themselves now.

Or maybe that’s just my youth speaking.  In any case, the article did exactly what the Man promised it would, and as I spent the next few hours reviewing my own finances, I found myself laughing a little.  We’re all allowed some smugness, aren’t we?

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Is it better or worse to be young in a depression?  It seems unfair.  Here we are in the golden time, all bright-eyed, muscled, sharp of mind and full of ambition, stymied (they say) by a nonexistent job market and an economy made of dust and dreams gone bad.  Aren’t things hard enough–haven’t they always been hard enough?  Shouldn’t I resent the fact that I’m meeting economical adversity at every corner, that it’s no longer about glory but about staying alive?

Except that I hardly notice there’s a recession on.  I was always bound to be poor at this stage of my life.  I’m a student and a writer with an allergy to the kind of ambition that lands you prematurely in a London high-rise, rising at 5, only at home in a suit.  We could be experiencing the biggest economic boom of the last 100 years and I’d still be seated in my humble study writing for free, living off tea, love, the kindness of others, and a patchy income that falls somewhere below the poverty line.  And I’ll tell you what else.  I’d rather be struggling now, rationing extravagance and soothing myself with cheap cider, than struggling later, with a family, maybe, a career to worry over, a house, roots stretched tight.

Strange to say, but we may be lucky after all, to experience the relative poverty of youth alongside the actual poverty of this downturn, recession, depression, whatever it turns out to be.  The manor house can wait.

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Yesterday the clouds spread like ink across the summer sky and then dried and disappeared, and I took a long, lazy run around Christ Church Meadow half-hoping to catch a glimpse of Alice’s Day, and when I came home I crawled back into bed and we had a nap with the window wide open to let in an almost-autumnal wind.

In the evening we watched the sun setting over the Oxfordshire countryside amidst the tea lights and elderflower champagne of a midsummer wedding.

It occurred to me sometime between then and now that even when I am not working, I am.  I’m always working.  Isn’t that frightening?  And a little exciting?

I’ve been reading and re-reading Louis MacNeice’s Selected Poems.  Here’s one for you on this sunny, windy, green July Sunday:

Coda

Maybe we knew each other better
When the night was young and unrepeated
And the moon stood still over Jericho.

So much for the past; in the present
There are moments caught between heart-beats
When maybe we know each other better.

But what is that clinking in the darkness?
Maybe we shall know each other better
When the tunnels meet beneath the mountain.

From Louis MacNeice. Selected Poems. London; Faber, 1988, p.158.

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Yesterday was hot.  I know what you’re thinking–it’s England, it can’t have been that hot–but I have lived through a summer in Boston, and this was not just a little bit of warmth seeping through the cloud cover, this was rare, beautiful, lethargy-inducing summer weather.  On my way home from work I stopped at the vintage-shop-on-the-corner-where-I-never-find-anything-but-always-have-to-look to try on a dress that was hanging in the window.  And that shop was warm, it was stuffy, but I thought, it’s ok, they’ve got a fan back there and the door open, and the salesgirl is still alive, so in the five minutes it takes me to try a dress on, I’ll be ok.

Wrong.

By the time I’d taken my clothes off, put the dress on, and taken the dress off again, I was so sweaty I was starting to drip (I don’t envy the next person to try that dress on, really).  And there I was in my underwear wondering if it would be weird if I ran out onto the Cowley Road like this just for the sake of some fresh air?

Back at home, I knew the only thing to do was have a nap.  I napped all the way through the afternoon, until the Man came home and made a feeble attempt at getting me up and enjoying my company whilst he ate dinner, but I made even feebler protestations and then wove in and out of sleep until he left for his evening football, at which point I stood for some time at the entrance to our house enjoying the cool of almost-darkness.  By the time he came home again I was human again and we decided, without ever saying so, that this would be a good time to clean the house, rearrange the study, and plant some herbs in the garden.

So while he potted and watered seeds in the dark (sadly not a euphamism), I moved into my new study, a process which mainly involved carrying books up and down the stairs.  It’s important to have the right books in the right places if I’m really to get down to work.  It simply won’t do, when I desperately need to consult a Latin-English dictionary (it could happen, though that thing called the internet makes it…unlikely), to find that it’s not within arm’s length but instead tucked away on the bookshelf in the lounge.  The result was this:

Perhaps most exciting of all is that I’ve finally found a use for the pretty but utterly impractical Moroccan blanket I bought in Fez on a whim, possibly high on mint tea.  It’s taken two years but it now has a place in the house, and I have a daybed on which to curl up:

This morning I brought my breakfast upstairs to my new space (I don’t like eating breakfast at the kitchen table, for whatever reason), and I felt good about it.  Really good.  I even wanted to stay sitting there and do some writing as I finished my tea, but I was desperately late for work, so I just have to hold onto that good feeling until this evening.

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