I’ve played everything close to the chest the last 5 years. I chose difficult professions that were essential and riddled with bullshit that allowed me to make more money due to said bullshit. Corrections, private security, explosive detection teams etc. I never made more than 60k, I don’t have gross amounts of debt and yet I still struggle. My husband and I struggle together despite our frugal ways and “well paying” jobs. Our shitty apartment complex raises our rent by 104$… for no reason. It’s still the cheapest place to live here and no upgrades have been done, ever.
I finally had the epiphany to start tattooing again. One, it’s not as soul crushing as a 9-5 and I determine the pricing. The only reason I stopped is because I was being harassed at my last shop in the most insane kind of way. Main artist would play animal torture videos over the PA system for hours to bother me… yet the whole studio and customers could hear it too. The owner didn’t care. Main artist’s apprentice who he was fucking would take my info and put it on casual encounters posing as me and would try to have men stalk me. She’d write that I was into r*pe and would encourage people to try that tactic. What did I do to deserve this? Not a god damn thing, these people had a reputation of doing this to all the new hires and treated it as if it was normal shop bitch hazing…. I didn’t know this before I applied. Everyone who apprenticed before me reached out and warned me that I was going to be treated like shit and that the owner enjoyed the drama. After I quit they made several online throw away accounts and posted nudes of other women claiming it was me. They sent it to my friends, family and my other employer. It went on for months and the police didn’t want to do anything about it. Essentially I got told that “ we can’t do anything about people saying bad stuff about you on the internet.”
Even though it escalated into them threatening my life and sending me pics of my House. I got so stressed over the situation that I walked away from something I worked so hard on. Glad that the shitty state of the world has helped me to regain the drive to do this again.