photo credit // gerald farinas
News column by Gerald Farinas. Opinions are not necessarily those of GoPride.com.
CHICAGO, ILL. -
When you have spent your life doing white-collar work and suddenly find yourself out on your ass, the whole world feels like it is gaslighting you. One minute you are climbing the corporate ladder, and the next you are staring at a stack of automated rejection emails or wondering how long you can survive on gig apps and hourly shifts. If you are one of the folks caught in this mess over the last year or two, you already know the drill: the crushing anxiety, the mounting bills, and that heavy, sinking feeling in your chest.
The hustle culture narrative is a complete mess right now. You do everything right, you put in the time, and then corporate America just ghosts you. And if you are queer or part of a chosen family network, you know how hard it is when the safety net is already frayed and you are trying to hold everything together for yourself and everyone else.
The hardest part is not even just the financial hit, though that part is brutal. It is the emotional whiplash. You go from sitting at a desk managing projects to standing on your feet for an eight-hour shift or delivering takeout, watching prices at the grocery store skyrocket while your unemployment benefits get cut off. Meanwhile, aging parents need more help than ever, healthcare gets more expensive by the day, and you are left holding the bag. It is enough to make you want to scream into Lake Michigan.
To understand why this is happening, you have to look past the individual resume and look at the massive gears grinding behind the curtain. Corporations are currently slashing overhead by leaning heavily on automated hiring filters, artificial intelligence, and endless rounds of quiet restructuring. They treat experienced, dedicated professionals like disposable spreadsheet rows, chasing endless profit margins while shifting all the economic risk onto the workers. Add in soaring inflation, sky-high interest rates, and a political climate determined to gut Medicaid, Medicare, and unemployment benefits, and you get a system built to squeeze ordinary people until they break.
The worst trick this economy pulls is making you feel like your unemployment or underemployment is some kind of personal moral failure. You scroll through social media and it looks like everyone else is living their best life, landing great gigs, and serving absolute success. So you start internalizing the shame. You think it is something you did wrong.
It is not you. It is the system.
You are not alone in this fight, and that is not just empty comfort. Thousands of skilled, brilliant professionals across Chicago and everywhere else are living this exact same nightmare right now. They are sitting at their kitchen tables late at night, sweating over the same bills, trying to figure out how to pivot into blue-collar work or part-time gigs just to keep the lights on. Across neighborhoods and industries, an entire generation of workers is quietly waking up to the fact that the old social contract has been shredded. You see it in the packed subway cars during off-peak hours, in the line at the food pantry, and in the quiet conversations among friends who thought they were secure. You are carrying a heavy load, but you are not carrying it by yourself. There is a whole community of us out here navigating the exact same chaos.
Talking honestly about how hard this is does not magically pay the rent or fix the insurance companies slashing coverage. But dropping the shame helps. Giving yourself permission to let go of the old corporate identity and do what you need to survive is not giving up. It is just being smart and resilient. Take a breath, lean on your people, and remember that your worth was never tied to a corporate title in the first place.
The hustle culture narrative is a complete mess right now. You do everything right, you put in the time, and then corporate America just ghosts you. And if you are queer or part of a chosen family network, you know how hard it is when the safety net is already frayed and you are trying to hold everything together for yourself and everyone else.
The hardest part is not even just the financial hit, though that part is brutal. It is the emotional whiplash. You go from sitting at a desk managing projects to standing on your feet for an eight-hour shift or delivering takeout, watching prices at the grocery store skyrocket while your unemployment benefits get cut off. Meanwhile, aging parents need more help than ever, healthcare gets more expensive by the day, and you are left holding the bag. It is enough to make you want to scream into Lake Michigan.
To understand why this is happening, you have to look past the individual resume and look at the massive gears grinding behind the curtain. Corporations are currently slashing overhead by leaning heavily on automated hiring filters, artificial intelligence, and endless rounds of quiet restructuring. They treat experienced, dedicated professionals like disposable spreadsheet rows, chasing endless profit margins while shifting all the economic risk onto the workers. Add in soaring inflation, sky-high interest rates, and a political climate determined to gut Medicaid, Medicare, and unemployment benefits, and you get a system built to squeeze ordinary people until they break.
The worst trick this economy pulls is making you feel like your unemployment or underemployment is some kind of personal moral failure. You scroll through social media and it looks like everyone else is living their best life, landing great gigs, and serving absolute success. So you start internalizing the shame. You think it is something you did wrong.
It is not you. It is the system.
You are not alone in this fight, and that is not just empty comfort. Thousands of skilled, brilliant professionals across Chicago and everywhere else are living this exact same nightmare right now. They are sitting at their kitchen tables late at night, sweating over the same bills, trying to figure out how to pivot into blue-collar work or part-time gigs just to keep the lights on. Across neighborhoods and industries, an entire generation of workers is quietly waking up to the fact that the old social contract has been shredded. You see it in the packed subway cars during off-peak hours, in the line at the food pantry, and in the quiet conversations among friends who thought they were secure. You are carrying a heavy load, but you are not carrying it by yourself. There is a whole community of us out here navigating the exact same chaos.
Talking honestly about how hard this is does not magically pay the rent or fix the insurance companies slashing coverage. But dropping the shame helps. Giving yourself permission to let go of the old corporate identity and do what you need to survive is not giving up. It is just being smart and resilient. Take a breath, lean on your people, and remember that your worth was never tied to a corporate title in the first place.
