In 2010 I finally achieved it, my career pinnacle to date--university instructor. Five years after obtaining my Master's, I was deemed acceptable to teach developmental composition to students at Cal State Dominguez Hills, an opportunity made possible by a Federal grant meant to shore up and advance the academic prospects of smart kids with low standardized test scores in basic English and Math from a majority Latino population.

In 2011, a year later, I was scraping together change and borrowing cigarette money. It is now 2012 and I am looking down the barrel of my minimal--$300 a month--unemployment insurance drying up.

As long as I can remember, the plutocrats, Republicans and one percenters have made a faithful and consistent noise in my ear: don't be lazy, get a job. When I graduated from college the first time in 1990, the hit movie of the season was titled Reality Bites, a cynical comedy with Winona Ryder satirizing the low/no/job situation for new graduates. A major recession meant vying for $6/hr wages doing unskilled or minimally skilled labor. Making a living with my Comparative Lit degree was not in the offing.

I wanted to be a writer, but to pay the rent I moved 50-pound mail tubs around an office. I was a temp, bringing home $7.50 an hour. I was not being lazy; I had a job, and it was exhausting. But I was right with prevailing ethos: do anything you can to make money. Be tough. Things will improve.

On my off hours, weekends, nights and early mornings I continued to pound out stories, essays, articles. I began to be published. I was proud of those efforts, and while the writing money had begun to trickle in, I was always aware that in the eyes of upper class society, I was still a bum--a bum who worked 40 hour weeks while editing and writing for music magazines, publishing short fiction and making numerous forays into the world of the novel. It didn't matter. To my ex-father-in-law and a handful of completely unsympathetic relatives, I was not living up to my potential, a dreamer (another euphemism for bum).

After about a decade of this, the balance flipped. I was sick beyond measure of putting my dreams and aspirations on hold,  as well-meaning people had advised me over the years. If I couldn't make a living as a writer, I could at least teach writing; so, heeding the prevailing wisdom again, I went back to school. Got an advanced degree. Began teaching college. 

And then, lo and behold, a commission to write a novel. Then another one. While still teaching college. Maybe it was true, I thought--perseverence does pay off. All those years of fine-tuning sentences and reading postmodern philosophy in the middle of the night had paid off. I was finally doing what I loved to do and getting paid well for it. I wrote more, and better. I worked hard at being a good teacher. The future no longer looked so bleak. I could even call myself happy.

Enter the Recession--again. Suddenly I wasn't working. I was still writing, mostly for myself now as my paying markets no longer existed. Still, I reasoned, things will get better. I could get a grant to go to school again. I went back to school, studying to be a high school English teacher.

There was grant money to pay for school, but as I was attending school, I didn't qualify for unemployment any more. I was too occupied as a student teacher to have any time or energy to make money. Finally, when I was offered a position as a university instructor, I jumped on it. Granted, I'd have to drop out of the teaching program, but I was getting sick of that anyway--it was beginning to dawn on me that I wasn't high school techer material. I felt I had very little in common with my colleagues, except for a handful of oddballs constantly at war with the NCLB regulations. 

Two weeks after the semester ended, I e-mailed my boss. Was there a chance of teaching at the university another term? "Very little," she wrote back.

Under the conventional regime, the ideology subscribed to by the one percenters, success builds on success. Was I bad teacher? Was there any reason other than the economy to let me go? By the university's own assessment I was considered highly eligible for rehire. My students' assessments ranked me highly in every area, from accessibility to enthusiasm to knowledge of the subject. I had glowing letters of recommendation from colleagues. But there was no money for me.

After more than a year of unemployment, medical bills for a chronic mood disorder are my biggest expense. January 2012 opened with torrential rainstorms that have only just begun to ease. I believe that I have my latest $144 automatic deposit from unemployment in my checking account and that is exactly as much money I have in the world. Savings? How can you save when you don't have an actual income?

Having lived hand-to-mouth and check-to-check in run-down studio apartments that smell like cat piss, typing away into the wee hours just to keep the spark alive, I thought I had more fortitude than this, more grit. But the thing is starting to wear at me. 

What did I want to do with my life? I've started to ask myself. Did I really want to be a writer? What's the point of writing? What's the point of doing anything, really? Sure, I can always go back to medical transcription and secretarial work and tutoring; tough people find a way, always. And that is the current plan, along with applying for any and all teaching jobs. 

But I am sick, I am angry, I am depressed, I am vulnerable to bad habits and I don't even know who to blame. The nightmares are relentless. I wake up and the mess in my room has only shifted contours. If I drop something, I don't bother to pick it up. I sleep 14 hours a night and three hours in the day. 

I am not a lazy person. At least I don't think I am. I haven't tried to take advantage of any system. I've tried to do the right thing according to the prevailing wisdom. And I lost.