Quick Reminder: We’re collecting submissions for April Check-Ins. Send the good, the bad, the weird, the sad, the . . . rhyming (?) to [email protected]. Subject: APRIL CHECK-IN. Submissions will be published on TUESDAY, APRIL 7. Anyone who contributes gets a FREE month of TSB’s Sunday edition. —TSB Editor

Thanks to A.J. for bringing me in this week to fill in. More of my work can be found here. —Ben Gaffaney

On Wednesday, I came home from work feeling sick about money. Me and four others had hung out in a conference room following a meeting, with one describing her retirement plan. She’s a corporate lawyer about my age (52) who previously worked in state government, and she was contemplating returning to a state job for a few years to unlock larger retirement, health and pension benefits based on time of service. In decades past, working for the state had benefits in line with any union to compensate for endemically low pay, but given the cost of health care these days, those benefits are significantly more valuable than ever.

Most of my cohort has some level of safety net from the state. The others in the room — ranging in age from 35 to 60 — talked about changes in benefits over the years, based on when their careers started, but all have significant money and coverage coming to them. I felt an intense swell of shame, the way I often do when I start to compare my career to others’, and I left the room for a gulp of water. I have no such benefit, and I’ve barely planned for retirement.

I’ve spent my working life refusing to choose a lane. I studied rhetoric in college, briefly attended an MFA program and intended to give writing a go. I wrote poetry, so making a living writing wasn’t an option, not even in the 1990s. I worked at Copy Cop, Mail Boxes Etc., and various temp jobs redolent of the 1997 film “Clockwatchers,” the single film I relate to the most. I landed my first permanent job at age 26, and stayed for over 15 years, accepting a relatively low salary because, well, I was a writer, and I didn’t know at the time how low it was. I submitted poems a few times a year and published very little. I got married and divorced more than once. I drank every day.