Unemployment and the lolita community

 This is a mostly personal, text-only post, so I'll be putting it under a cut.

My employment status (not) and my dwindling savings have been negatively impacting many things, but particularly my participation in my comm. I want to be able to afford to go to high teas and fancy meets, I want cons to come back, and I want to support independent designs I love, but I need to be careful.

The job search has been tough. I have enough experience, skills, and background to be employed, but I live in an urban area in which competition is tight. Additionally, it is a matter of course and a matter of etiquette that people here begin conversations by discussing work; there is no such thing as work-life balance here. Every meet, I mark myself as different (and perhaps as a flawed failure). There is no escape except employment.

There's a greater lesson in this: lolita is a community of conspicuous consumption, and even without new purchases, it's expensive to be a lolita. Life is expensive in general, I know, but this is even more so. Lolita really isn't just clothes: it's overwhelmingly a subculture with social aspects. Events are particularly demanding; costly, time consuming, and often requiring travel. Even lonelitas do 'lolita things' like museum visits, drinking tea, or going to brunch-- things that cost money. I hate it. I just want to live, but I am foiled at every corner by monetary bullshit. 

I miss going outside. I miss working and scrolling through Closet Child at lunch. I want to start living my life again.

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