A Flick of the Pen

In the 1999 film American Beauty, there’s a scene where Annette Bening’s character, a real estate agent, cleans a house she’s trying to sell. Drawing the curtains closed, she breaks down crying. The emotional outburst indicated her character’s feeling of powerlessness and disappointment in how her life turned out.

This scene resonated with me then, at the age of twenty-one, and even more so now, at forty-nine. I find myself struggling with the sobering realization that I’ve lived for more years than I have left, with nothing to show for my time on Earth.

The pursuit of the American dream had me believing that if I earned a four-year degree and worked hard, I could attain love, family, financial security, and a nice place to live. All the things on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

However, given the current economy, I am left with nothing. I had a career in tech with a promising trajectory, then got laid off twice in 2023 and 2026 respectively. I’ve had to cobble together three part-time jobs, yet am still living paycheck-to-paycheck.

My savings were wiped out during my periods of unemployment. I own nothing: I rent an apartment and lease a car. On top of all that, I’m a single mom.

I’m a Gen X woman, the very combination these corporations are shedding left and right. Just ask any Gen X woman in tech and they’ll tell you that ageism is real.

I always try to find the humor in every topic I write about, but – like cancer – there is nothing humorous about this economy. Thousands of employees are being laid off every quarter by the biggest tech companies. In this job market, it’s impossible to find full-time work that pays what I used to make.

I read a post on LinkedIn by a former tech engineer who took a job as a bus driver because he wasn’t able to get anything better after being laid off. That story made the news. Yet, this is so many peoples’ experience.

Mentally, I’m closing the curtains and crying every day. The frustration is all-consuming.

The top 1% won’t be satisfied until they’ve created Skynet and signed humanity’s death warrant. Our only hope is that there’s a T-800 out there to protect us.