From the outside, there appear to be two kinds of single parents. You can do it all, strive for perfection, and pull it off. Or you can barely get by, almost fall apart, and struggle for breath. For me, though, it has always been both. Strength and struggle seem to go hand in hand.
Last year, a couple in Florida – presumably hoping to distinguish their $45,000 adoption crowdfunding campaign from others like it – came up with a gimmick they referred to as the “Baby Draft”: If you donated, you could vote for your favorite football team, and the adopted child would be raised as a fan of whichever team got the most votes.
"I try not to do anything that’s not paid anymore, because it’s really hard to justify your work when you’re doing things for free. People assume that what you do is very easy if you don’t ask for money."
Sarah Miller's previous work for The Toast, for which she has been paid by Nikki in a timely fashion, can be found here.
To: evansackler-mayberry@website.com
From: Sarahpetersmiller@writer.com
Hi Evan,
I did two stories in January (to refresh your memory one was an analysis of Beyoncé’s last 100 photographed outfits, “100 Times Beyoncé was Perfect,” each with its own
Welcome to THE DOUGH, an occasional series in which Manjula Martin talks with women in creative professions about money and work. When I called AB Chao on the phone, she was in New Orleans painting the kitchen cabinets in her new apartment. The cabinets had been “a gross, rental off-white” and Chao was in the middle of a lengthy process of repainting them bright white, not being pleased with the results, then repainting them again.
These days you hear a lot about the decline of print culture, and I think we all know what’s at fault: not enough mail-order products being sold in contemporary magazines. As a favour to all current and future publishing houses, I have taken the liberty of listing and ranking everything for sale in a 1977 issue of Archie, so that we all may learn by example. 1. 100 Little Dolls for $2.00 “Little dolls” are…
A of everything, get off my case about leaving stuff until the last minute or getting an accountant, I've got everything as handled as it needs to be. But more to the point: I cannot be the last person who writes out her taxes by hands and mails them in via actual mail, can I? Because, yes, the Internet, but counterpoint: THEY MAKE IT HARD AS NERF BALLS TO DO YOUR TAXES ON THE INTERNET.
This conversation first appeared in Scratch magazine’s Q4 2014 issue. Read more Scratch about the business of being a writer here. In the publishing industry, most of the gatekeepers come from a place of race and class privilege. How does this skewed power dynamic affect the careers of writers of color? Scratch invited our panelists to have a conversation about their experiences as people who walk through those “gates” every day. Novelist and essayist…
I enjoy my job and I like working hard, but one part of employed life really gets me down: I struggle to connect with my co-workers, while they all seem to have found their cliques. The ones I supervise see me as uptight (as far as I can tell); the ones who supervise me aren't that friendly. I feel stuck in the middle, with few confidantes on either
I recently received an email alerting me in the subject heading that my husband had sent me a gift. This wasn’t unusual, this is what people do, find silly things on the internet and sprinkle them into each other’s virtual mailboxes, the cheeky e-cards, the funny animal video, the link to a news article. I’m busy, so I assumed it was something of that ilk and reminded myself to open it later.
I lived my first three weeks in Los Angeles as if I were on vacation. Of course there was work to attend to Monday through Friday and a more permanent living situation to find, but there was also wine to drink and food to eat and money to spend in a reckless manner. The lingering echoes of my long-running employment woes can be found everywhere. Whenever I think that I have uncovered them all, another…
Mindy Hung’s previous bodice-ripping work for The Toast can be found here. Most recently: All the Sporty Ladies. Today’s Wealthy Romance Heroine is a serious creature, pulling on gumboots to launch herself on philanthropic missions, or donning tailored mansuits to protect her family’s business interests. Unlike her popular counterpart, the Billionaire Hero, who spends a considerable portion of his income on sex dungeons and—I don’t know!—floggers woven from the pelts of Komodo dragons, the…
What kind of an asshole doesn’t talk to their own mother? Let me try to answer that. This past July, soon after my 31st birthday, I received a letter from the IRS. It instructed me to immediately pay back-taxes I owed on a large cash withdrawal I had made in 2011, or suffer dire, IRS-y penalties. Since I hadn’t made any large cash withdrawals in 2011—or, like, in any year, ever—I was briefly confused. Briefly.
