Ever so briefly, I’m back in the land of Uber after many months on the outskirts of civilization.

In fact, I built my itinerary around the gig economy—or tried to. I’ve been declined by two Airbnb hosts for the upcoming weekend (“Oops, I thought I changed our availability. We’re having painting done,”) and I was utterly dependent on ride-sharing to get to and from The Little Middle School’s annual Recognition Ceremony (In person this year! In a park!). If I hadn’t been able to find a ride, I would have been in trouble.

Americans in urban areas have, during the pandemic, heavily relied upon Instacart to DoorDash and all the other vaguely problematic on-demand services. it feels a bit fragile to count on something that is based around individual decisions.

Read More

There was a lot I didn’t know about how people lived until I moved to Atlanta.

In Maine, the students I taught grew up the way I did. They went to public school. Their first experience of music lessons might have been when I became their voice teacher, even if they were sixteen or seventeen years old. They worked in the summers in restaurants, hotels, or retail stores, collecting hourly wages while serving the tourists who visited the seacoast in droves. College was accessible, but not easily.

Then, in my early twenties, I started teaching music lessons on the campus of an expensive, exclusive private school. My students ranged from itty-bitty yet already high-achieving five-year-olds to teenagers picking up their second or third instrument amidst a wide array of extracurriculars and other opportunities that my teenage self could have only dreamed about — if I had even known they existed.

Read More

When someone buys something, it’s because they value it more than the dollars they’re paying.

And for the person selling it, it’s worth less than the dollars they will receive.

Somehow, through the magic of the transaction, more value is created for both parties than was present before. It’s a win-win.

Ideally, it’s the same dynamic in an employer-employee relationship. If I choose to work for a company, it’s because what I am getting in return is worth more to me than my time. Simultaneously, I am producing more value for the company than I’m being paid for. It’s an exchange that creates mutual benefit.

Read More

Years ago, I moved to a new city with only the slimmest of job prospects (that was crazy decision number one).

I managed to find a part-time, temporary gig as an assistant teacher of music classes for older adults. We were teaching them how to play keyboard instruments, but the goal was really to sell them fancy home organs so complex that their array of buttons and dials resembled the cockpit of a 747 (the price was similar to that of an aircraft, too).

Read More

In my early twenties, when I was trying to figure out my life, I briefly pursued the idea of moving to Boston, which is just over an hour from the small town on the southernmost coast of Maine where I grew up.

On a hot summer day (yes, they have them in New England), I drove down to an outlying commuter station and took the T into Cambridge, where I met with a really cool and interesting young woman and her roommate. They were looking for a third. I remember that the monthly rent for one room of this shared three-bedroom apartment was more than I ended up paying for my first one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta, which was a palace compared to these potential digs.

Read More