I am stunned,
by the mismatch between our effort and our earnings.
Writing takes time, energy, attention, and brainpower.
It requires engagement to build a community—
and in return, we earn pennies!
Not even $10 in a month.
Meanwhile, the cost of a single pizza dinner is $40.
How can anyone feel comfortable?
I think of my schoolteachers in rural India.
They had stable salaries, ancestral homes,
and no rent to worry about.
They kept tenants for extra income,
had agricultural fields to grow paddy and potatoes.
They rode bicycles to school— no fuel costs.
Food was homemade by the wife,
and had brood of kids for fulfilling life.
And here we are highly-educated immigrants,
balancing reduced earnings with full-time parenting.
Women are breaking under pressure
and even pregnancies are getting riskier due to stress.
Some are forgoing marriage and choosing not to have kids—
terrified by the high cost of living.
Our bills are huge, and savings are meager.
It’s not a nice change, in fact scary!
I wonder, how long will it continue?
About the Creator
Seema Patel
Hi, I am Seema. I have been writing on the internet for 15 years. I have contributed to PubMed, Blogger, Medium, LinkedIn, Substack, and Amazon KDP.
I write about nature, health, parenting, creativity, gardening, and psychology.
Keep reading
More stories from Seema Patel and writers in Poets and other communities.
Comments (4)
Good job in sharing your fears on the economic plight, but as a creative writer it is nice to earn, but to really make the money one must do other things that could be related to this field as in teaching or as I found some other kind of writing assignments. To me that is the only way to try and catch up to the high cost of living. Good luck.
Good
I worry about this all the time! It makes it so hard for us to do what we enjoy when we barely get $10 a month!
Nice