Copyright startribune
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were always jobs to be found in the Twin Cities suburbs as I worked my way through high school and college. I never thought I’d ask for government help. I was that smug. It wasn’t until moving to Bemidji in 2005 that I realized not every place has those opportunities. I took education classes there for a semester intending to switch careers, but education wasn’t for me, so I dropped out and looked for a full-time job. I couldn’t find one. For a while, I wrote news releases for Bemidji State University until that job dried up, then created church newsletters. Neither of these part-time gigs paid much. I got married and we each started a business – my husband doing car repair and me a women’s magazine. Our income didn’t cover our expenses. We bought day-old bread and canned chicken and ate venison and garden produce. We turned down the thermostat. I wore a winter jacket and hat while working on the computer, and still my hands grew red and stiff with cold. And no, we had no cable TV. We didn’t smoke or do drugs or buy new clothes. We were frugal. Anybody who knows me will vouch for my lifelong frugality; I can see my sister-in-law chuckling now. For several years, our annual taxable income was less than $10,000. Our dwindling savings kept us scraping along. I was constantly looking for full-time jobs, willing to ditch the magazine in favor of better income and benefits. But Bemidji needed nurses and truck drivers, not writers. Neither were a fit for someone who grows faint at the sight of blood or grows unbearably sleepy on familiar, long-distance drives.
