There has been a rather clever ad campaign courtesy the New York Lottery recently. I see them every time I ride the subway and they have the funny effect of not making me think about the lotto, but rather about life. It's the slogan: What will you think about when you don't have to think about money?

I guess I've been thinking a lot about money recently because I left my job in August after three years. It was a really great job with amazing benefits and incredible people. But I had gotten to the point where I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, and more importantly, I was no longer producing artistically. I was consumed with how much I hated my days. My depression blocked my focus and inspiration. So I left.

Now I'm artistically blocked because I haven't yet found a steady job and my thoughts are consumed by lack of money. I was speaking to a writer friend about this very same thing a few weeks back. We were pondering the amount of effort we expend on just trying to make ends meet and the potential of that effort put towards a better purpose. In a creative city whose constantly increasing cost makes it difficult for creatives to survive, we've been seeing a lot of friends bite the dust and move back home, wherever that is. Or enroll in law school. Or become a stay-at-home parent. Or finally take over that family business. And I wake up every day and continue to fight the good fight with no promise that I will make it another day.

Maybe this has always been New York's story: every day hundreds of people arrive to pursue their dreams and there's only so much room. But what if it's a national epidemic? What if artists are biting the dust in Seattle, and L.A., and Miami? What if life is getting so expensive and the middle class is disappearing so quickly, that the United States is basically losing its artists?

I know some people might think, But you just said hundreds arrive in New York everyday! The thing is, though, that those are usually younger people, brand new to the city, brand new to their art form. You know how you get better at practicing medicine the longer you're a doctor? Yeah, well, same goes for practicing your art. What I see happening is that we're potentially losing our artists when they're just hitting their stride. You struggle in a studio with a crazy roommate for a few years living off ramen and occasionally sleeping in the bathtub. You go to coffee shops and absorb the scene and get a pulse on what's going on while you continue to take classes and practice. And after several years of this, you get tired - the rent has gone up steadily, but your wages haven't. You remember when soap used to cost a couple of dollars less...just last year. And you've finally come up with the idea that's going to be your break, that truly conveys the human spirit: an idea for that novel/landscape/film script. But then you lose your lease, your bartending shifts get cut down, you have unpaid doctor's bills because of that bad back from sleeping in the bathtub and you have no idea how you're going to get to the next day. All that energy and passion that you had for that great creative work...that you didn't have when your intestinal tract wasn't yet eroded by too much ramen...is now spent trying to survive.

That's our art these days: survival. What message could Rent have conveyed if they'd actually been able to pay the rent? Would Jonathan Larson have encouraged us instead to feed the hungry and be kind to one another if there was room in his brain, if he weren't consumed with making ends meet? Food for thought: An interesting article about the effect on compromised brain activity when in a state of poverty. It's not just artists that bite the dust.

And I'm certainly not the only person using precious brain activity to think about what could be were it not for worries and obligations. A Tokyo artist and psychologist, Naho Iguchi, is spending a year in Berlin to experiment with making decisions not tied to worries about money or social obligations. In order to do so, she had to get funding from 22 different donors.

The haunting question remains every time I ride the subway: What would I be capable of producing if money weren't on my mind constantly? I have every intention of finding out. But others may not be so lucky.

Dear Attending Physicians,

I am vegan. My husband is vegan. About half our friends are vegan. I am 32 years old and I have not keeled over yet. In addition, my cholesterol has not gone above 160, I have not had my bones break off one by one (as you threatened they would when I gave up milk four years ago), and I have definitely not suffered from protein deficiency.

Which in fact raises my question to you: have you ever seen anyone suffer from protein deficiency, outside of medical journals reporting on starving children in Africa? Cause I have a news flash for you:
this is America. We eat on average 160 grams of protein a day. The recommended dosage? About 50 grams a day. Which explains a lot. A fuck load, in fact. Have you read Dr. T. Colin Campbell's seminal work, The China Study? Cause you know what, I did. And I'm not even a doctor. So what are you doing sitting around not reading it?

In said book (plus several others) you'll find the real history of our protein obsession: two egomaniacal white-supremacist 19th-century buffoons practicing pure quackery at astounding prices and throwing in sexual politics for good measure.
  
When you snap out of it and join the world of the living, you'll find that every single food group contains protein. Obviously, some higher than others, like beans. But in the end, as long as you don't eat, say, 50 lbs. of eggplant as your only dish all day every day, you're gonna find that it evens out. A couple of almonds here, some kale and swiss chard there, cup of beans, some brown rice and maybe a banana with honey for dessert ought to do the trick. And voila, you'll get your protein fill without putting yourself at risk for death by heart attack (or something worse) at the ripe old age of 28.

So the next time I'm in your office for a recommended yearly check-up (which I take very seriously, thank you), when I mention I'm vegan and you ask me if I'm getting enough protein, I will point you to this letter if I don't accidentally slap you first (my mood depending). And when you ask for extra tests on my blood work because I'm vegan, it needs must be asked why you're not performing those extra tests for meat-eaters. Because when was the last time you saw your precious burger-ingesting children chow down
on piles of spinach and sweet potatoes (rich in calcium, beta-carotene and the recent catch-word antioxidants)? And if you seriously think dead cow flesh is going to contain adequate levels of necessary vitamins, minerals and cancer-fighting antioxidants, you need to rethink the process. Think hard.

I will from now on only be taking questions regarding my protein when you walk the walk you've been talking. Yes, doc, I want to see you shoveling fistfuls of kale and quinoa. Because it's your job. Till then,
have you checked your protein counts lately? Cause frankly, I'm concerned.

Sincerely,
 
Viviana Leo, et. al.

But the one thing that is literally killing me are the long hours. My patience for pretty much anything taps out at six hours (I would've never survived the first screening of von Stroheim's Greed - I would've stood up, slapped that fucker, thrown up on him, and walked out to the nearest bar). On Monday I left work at 2:30 to go to acupuncture. Luckily, my lovely acupuncturist always runs an hour late, so I sat in the waiting room reading about lovely things in her books and magazines, smiling at how I couldn't possibly return to work until the next day. I had a blast. I felt energized - so energized that I stopped by 23rd street on a whim to obtain a spelt bagel and read a few pages of my book. I didn't crawl home like I usually do and opt to just eat hummus for dinner cause it's easiest. I felt alive, like part of the living! I felt so good that the next day I thought for sure I could even cook something when I got home from work! Here's what actually went down: at 2:30, six hours into my daily tenure, I was ready to get up and do something else. But wait a tick, my contract requires that I stay until 5:30 because the phone may ring at any moment! Or there could be, *gasp*, a FedEx delivery to sign for, or someone may generally need their ass wiped by the support staff (re: me). So I tried to focus and do three more hours of work. I barely pushed out one email. I managed to half-heartedly organize something. And then I dragged myself to the gym where I had to cut my workout short because I didn't have the energy. And then I went home, collapsed on the couch and ate hummus for dinner.

No amount of ticking stripe fabric can save a genuinely creative person being worked to death by The American Way. And all those people who spend 1-2 days a week working from home? They're bright people who inherently know that should they be forced to spend more than 30 hours per week with people they have no familial relation to and didn't choose to marry, then their creativity and productivity actually suffers. So, in conclusion, and on behalf of all Yahoo! employees...dear Marissa Mayer: I have an exhausted widened ass you can kiss.