8am in the city: my Uber driver was born and raised in Pakistan. He used his Uber earnings in NYC to buy a 7-11 in rural Pennsylvania. He was closing on a second 7-11 in the same rural county, and he planned to move to Pennsylvania because he already owned a building there. Driver appeared to be in his 30s. I asked about his dream scenario. Driver said his dream was to earn enough money to retire early and travel since he's been working since he was a teen. He also owns a farm in Pakistan. He asked me what I did, so I told him, and he was like, 'Wow.' But I was thinking about what he did and feeling that same 'wow' for his life.
When the Uber driver dropped me off at 116th St, I went into a few stores to gather supplies for a Buddhist class. Every business I entered was run by ppl from other countries. Every person I talked to at 8am had an accent and was up and working in their own establishment. The only ppl who sounded like they were from the United States were either customers, Uber delivery ppl picking up stuff, or beggars standing in the street with a cup asking for spare change. I remembered being in Colombia and talking to a person whose uncle was an Uber driver in LA. Worked 80 hrs a week and poured everything into his own business. He still drives an Uber because that money let him start more businesses. As an American, I hear these stories and feel like such a slacker.
I went to good schools with good teachers. I don't think I've ever heard a bunch of US-born students gathered together, passionately talking about starting a business. And almost none of them talked about this entrepreneurial stacking of jobs to get to ownership, ie using their paper-route money to open a lemonade stand, then using the lemonade-stand money to buy a food truck, and then using the food-truck money to start a brick-and-mortar restaurant, and scaling up and up. That upward spiral leads to ownership, which then creates jobs for other people.
I've heard my peers talk about 'start-up' and seed money, i.e., getting other people to invest in their dream so they can do it. I've neard ppl talk about philanthropic donors for their not-for-profit. Occasionally I've heard my peers mention the 'daring' thought of going to a bank for a loan. I've never heard a group of native citizens say 'fuck it, Imma start this on my own by delivering these pizzas...but that is not the end goal nor do I want to be promoted at the pizza parlor. This is just a link in the chain to have employees. Just to be clear, there were some American-born 'freaks' in my classes who became small-business owners. But even then, most of it involved marketing or sales or real estate and talking to investors.
This is all 8am anecdotal evidence, but I started digging through my memory for times when groups of native citizens rose up and started their own businesses. The only time that happened was...during the quarantine. I remember there was an article about a year into the pandemic that said Black women business ownership exploded. Blk ppl, and specifically blk women- were sitting at home. They were either fired or thinking about their job -which was now online remote- and said, 'Life is too short to be in all these Zoom meetings all day.' There was a huge surge of black women taking their own money and starting up businesses as well as working a job in order to start up their own business. It feels like native citizens are risk-averse unless faced with an epidemic or a sudden life change.
Personally, I have situational entrepreneurship. I can take the risk if you throw me in the water. But that's generally a last resort b/c white-collar employers take on all the risks for me: someone pays the insurance, finds the building, and sets up payroll. I get to show up, work, and go home. One of the most vivid times for me was the WGA strike. My agent warned me that it was coming 6 months before we struck, so I started arranging my own career and what to do for that pause period, which I thought might be a year. When the strike finally happened, it felt like a starter pistol in a race. I had been stretching, warming up, and BOOM, I took off. It had been years since I felt that...alive. Don't get me wrong, I love working in TV and the well-paid studio jobs. But when I was on my own, other parts of me were activated. The hunting part of my brain woke up. The scheming and planning revved up. It felt like my body started pumping out my pheromones and hormones for the hunt. I literally felt sexier and more alive, even though I was earning less money. I was doing speaking engagements, arranging commissions, setting up some indie projects. Then, in the midst of all this, my agents called me. "Good news...the strike is going to end soon, and so we can pick up where we left off.' My reaction to the call was...mixed. Yes, I was happy to get paid again and immediately pick up on all the projects that were paused at studios. Yay! But the hunting part of my brain was like 'oh...so I guess I'm not in eat-what-you-kill mode. Ok body: turn down the testosterone and pheromones by 60%. We're back in the'eat-what-is-placed-in-front-of-you' setting. And I think a lot of native citizens who grow up in white-collar families live and die in that mode.
I guess my ideal is to balance both: the luxury of white-collar native citizenship and the hustler spirit of an immigrant. I don't want to own a chain of 7-11s in Pensatucky, nor do I want to spend my entire life sitting at a desk, taken care of by a corporate employer. Playwriting is my compromise. It is a bit more of my 'wolf vibe.' It still involves some entrepreneurial hustling based on personal relationships and putting myself out there. I think it's why so many playwrights who get established in TV return to the stage. It's not b/c of the money...good LORD, it's definitely not theatre cash. Actors and writers return to the stage because there is a spirit of improvisation and a 'we'll make it work' attitude. And the mind feels more...alive, even if the wallet does not. But life is more than stacking cash by any means necessary. We all want to feel our whole selves in this journey
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