Last week, I mislabeled installment 9 as installment 10. Back on track this week.
Here's a quote to start things rolling.
"Protect Yourself, Give Up and Party, Help Others, Blame, Bear Witness, [or] Go About Your Life. These are the only six reactions possible in a crisis[....]" -- Margaret Atwood, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Which way are you reacting? For my own part, it's been a combination of all six.
Paratroops over the fold. Y'all already know what to expect.
One: Protect Yourself
My self-protection? I would say this is the reaction I have the weakest. I bought a case of Ramen instead of a half-pound of imported aged gouda, but that's about the extent of it. I don't have any savings or investments to re-adjust.
Two: Give Up and Party
There was an article in the paper today about enjoying the bittersweet fruits of unemployment. Miniepo no longer misses me, we spent some time today playing Sequence and watching "The Colour Of Magic" on the telly. Yesterday I sat down across my favorite barrel chair. He was in it at the time so we looked like the time Tracy Morgan played Shaq's dad on SNL. Friday night I got together with a bunch of former co-workers (who I count as friends rather than acquaintances or work-buddies) and played a round of Illuminatus, one of my favorite games I haven't played in years. I've built a couple shelves. I've read some books I hadn't gotten around to reading (or re-reading) for far too long. The rapid graying of my hair over the last few years has not only stopped but has actually reversed. I would not think it possible, but it's true.
Three: Help Others
When I was employed, I made a donation to the United Way every payday through an automatic deduction. I was given the option to determine where it would go, so I allotted half of it to the local food shelf. My family and I, not so many years ago, made it through quite a few slim months thanks to the food shelf. Now that I am not employed, I can no longer afford to give financially in a formal way. One of our oldest House Rules, however, is
- No one leaves this house hungry unless they insist upon it.
I think of myself as a pessimist, but people tell me I have an optomistic outlook. I try to cheer people up and help them look at the upside, because I am a pessimist in the classical sense -- an optomist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows this to be true.
Four: Blame
I spend at least three hours a week yelling at the TV/computer screen/newspaper. Who doesn't?
Somebody is at fault here. The a$$holes who bet $30 on every $1 of mortgage, the broker who showed that even a modest increase in home values would make refinancing trivial, me for believing in the face of all previous life experience that my job would be stable and my income continue to increase by a few percent every year, the soulless beancounters who decided that it would be better to have 2.5 people do the job of 3.5, the repressive reactionary Republicans who decided it would be a good thing to bring back the Gilded Age, my mother, your mother, Dick Cheney's mother... Hmmm. That might not be a bad place to start....
Rage -- there was a story on the news about how "the ordinary guy" is coping. It was a story about a guy who lost his $500,000/year job, and his $2,000,000 house, and now lived in the basement. The basement of the bar he bought and now owns and operates. Yeah, that's reeeeeal ordinary. I guess if everyone would just quit whining and buy an established business that caters to people wanting to escape, our problems would be over! And the article in the paper about people "learning to live on a budget". These people saved $10,000/year by firing the maid and landscaper. Yeah, I guess if we all started mopping our own kitchens and cutting our own grass the economy would recover. Not like the low-wage peons who are now out of work, they must not be real people anyway! I know! They can go down to the local bar that Mr. Hard Luck Ex-Millionaire bought and drink away their troubles!
I am so. Incredibly. Sick. Of the news media showing rich people acting suprised that you can stretch your burger by putting a couple slices worth of bread crumbs in the meatloaf. Or you can throw a little brown sugar in your ketchup when you want BBQ sauce. Come on! This is the way real people have been living since, since, since... the Great Depression, where our parents or grandparents learned that you can never be 100% sure of where your next meal, or your neighbor's next meal, might be coming from.
Five: Bear Witness
I think the title of this diary covers that one.
Six: Go About Your Life
I'm paying my bills, best as I can. I'm buying groceries, paying my property taxes, sending my kid to school, spending the majority of my time without chemicals stronger than nicotine and caffine in my system, monitoring my blood glucose, taking my turn doing the dishes, communicating online, preparing to officiate at a couple weddings, plotting a novel with Notepo, salting the sidewalk when it ices, petting the cat (when he wants it), cooking food, breathing in and out and in again.
Keepin' on keepin' on. In the end, I can't spend all my time raging or partying or blogging or hiding or helping. What I have to do is live, and hope that things will improve before my resources run out. That's really all you can do, if you want to retain any hope at all that we'll still have a society, that at least some of the dikes will hold. If enough people lose that hope, lose the idea that things will get better, and go into bunkers or burn it all in one final orgy, then we probably are lost.
I don't think we're that far down yet.
Not yet.
I hope enough people keep on keepin' on so that something worthwhile comes out of the rubble. So that we aren't just the prequel to the Empire of the Roaches.