The search for a new game for which to win bread is on, and it continues, albeit with little to show. The job market is unrelentingly soft, unless, that is you are looking for part time or seasonal work. This bodes poorly for the economy in general. Not wanting to launch into a diatribe, but if wages continue to decline for most, the economy will continue to tank, faster and faster. Companies are focusing so much on productivity, and keeping expenses and wages in check (as is their right as private entities) that they are squeezing ever more out of ever fewer people. That, in conjunction with steadily expanding taxes and steepening inflation, is destroying the middle class. What solution do I have for our current system? I don't, and neither does anyone else. More regulation? Tried it - failed. Less regulation? Tried that - got corrupt, failed. I, along with a goodly numbers of other far more qualified to opine, are coming to the opinion that the current system can't be fixed. The future will get interesting, at a faster and faster pace.
Long story short - I am owed nothing. I owe loyalty to only those who owe loyalty to me. I have to do a better job of not carrying water, saving the bacon, for people who don't care about me in any other way than what water I carry or bacon I save. If I do a job, I need to be paid. At this point in my life, with the other opportunities that are possible, I need hourly pay, and a flexible schedule. The salary I am currently paid? On paper, it's great! But, if you were to calculate what I make with all of the overtime I work, I make less than minimum wage. I need to be able to have time to enjoy my family and not think about work all of the time. I need to have an employer that might actually ask me how I am once (not once in a while, but my direct report, a person I was a friend to, and helped build a business hasn't had a personal conversation with me in over two years that I haven't initiated).
There, I feel better getting that out there to you, gentle reader. Am I whining? Maybe a bit, sure. But I need to get this out into the universe - to manifest my intentions - this is the mostly anonymous way i have chosen to do it.
Not the only reason I started hashing this blog post out. I wanted to say that the future is still a bright one. Opportunities abound, I just have to work harder to seize them. I also realize that I need to have the time and mental discipline to do this more. To create, to opine, especially if no one, or a very few, ever see it.
So there it is, that's it in a nutshell.
Crazed American, out.
