Lock Every Door

by Riley Sager

Every so often, life offers you a reset button. When it does, you need to press it as hard as you can.

Because here’s the thing about being poor—most people don’t understand it unless they’ve been there themselves.

That’s another thing most people don’t understand—how quick others are to judge. And make assumptions. And presume your financial predicament is the result of stupidity, laziness, years of bad choices.

Never take anything you haven’t earned, my father used to say. You always end up paying for it one way or another.

Because here’s something else no one understands unless they’ve been there: unemployment is boring. Soul-crushingly so. People have no idea how much of their day is taken up by the act of going to work. The getting ready. The commute there. The eight hours at your desk. The commute home. So much time automatically occupied. Take them away and there’s nothing but empty hours stretching before you, waiting to be filled. Kill time before it kills you.

But then something unexpected happened, and I had to dig myself a little hole of debt to deal with it. Then to fill in that hole, I had to dig another, this one a little bigger. After a while, there were so many holes that I was bound to fall into one and not be able to get out. It’s hard. Life is hard. And too damn expensive.”

Doing good deeds—makes this rotten world just a little bit better.”

One time is an anomaly. Two times is a coincidence. Three times is proof.