Poverty: my new M.O.?

Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here - why I continue to drag myself out of bed at ungodly hours in the morning to serve mediocre coffee to the ungrateful snobs of lower Capitol Hill day after day as though it's really making my life any better - or even serving the purpose of a job in the first place. After all, my meager paychecks (which continue to become more meager as our hours are cut as business dwindles due in no small part to the struggling economy) no longer manage cover the cost of my rent, student loan payments, car insurance, credit card bills, and fuel expenses... week after week I find myself hovering slightly above (or dipping well below) the zero-dollar mark in my bank account, and I find myself relying more and more upon the charity of friends and circumstantial occurrences of free food from work - I hate being that guy. But I haven't been able to afford a bona fide grocery shopping trip since early May.

I look for jobs daily - applying for many that I have little or no interest in only because I know, were I given the chance, that I could do well at them. But mostly I'm not given a chance; I don't hear anything back - jobs that once went to people fresh out of high school are now going to people with masters' degrees, and even at my level, with a bachelor's degree in English and no internship experience to speak of, the pickings are slim. Is this yet another indicator of the state of our economy? I' m tempted to say yes, but I could just be reading doom where I want to - making excuses for my own laziness. Maybe this is how one goes about becoming that guy on the street struggling to sell Real Change newspapers, by not seizing opportunity by the strings... by making a habit of waiting for the perfect life-course to slap itself in your face until one day, the unbounded limitless possibility of youth dwindles down into one sad square of pavement that, in all probability, belongs to someone - or, sadder yet, a society - who doesn't want you there.

In short: I can't afford Seattle in spite of the fact that with each new day I spend here it feels more like home.