Use "meager existence" in a sentence

1. Cyclopes are one-eyed giants that eke out a meager existence in wild lands. Isolationists by nature, they avoid contact with other races and try to drive away strangers in their territory.

2. Wu Wenguang's Bumming in Beijing is an intriguing independent documentary about the lives of five drifting artists (two aspiring painters, a writer, a self-taught theatre director, and a photographer) who followed their dreams to the capital and scrape out a meager existence by working freelance