I posted my one and only diary October 18, 2008. How strange it is to come back and read it four years later! I can't tell you how heartbreaking and desperate I found it to be. I remember that woman though and I feel so sorry for her. Four years later and I feel I need to update everyone who was so kind as to comment on it then. I think what I have to say will answer that question everyone asks, "are you better off now than four years ago?" Please, follow me after the fold.
Hi Daily Kos! Its been a long time. You know what though? Its been a pretty good four years for me. If you haven't read the previous diary, I worked in a bookstore because I loved books not because it was a great company or the pay was great. I was miserable all the time. I worked for a corporation who blamed all of their faults on the lowly worker rather than the poor decision making at the top. I hadn't had a raise in four years and the cost of living was getting to my little family. My husband worked there too and made even less than I did.
In the summer of 2010, we got out just as the company started closing stores as a precursor to bankruptcy. My husband and I both found better jobs. I am now working in a University bookstore. The hours are better, the working conditions are better, the pay is better. Everything about this job is better. There's even room for promotions if I want. I don't know how long I'll stay at this job, but for the first time in ten years, I'm not constantly searching the classifieds. We've started to rebuild our credit after the disastrous early 2000's. We're still in the same house, we have a new car, our bills are current. We even have money in savings.
I still think of myself as "working poor" if only because together our income is just under $50,000 (a far cry from Mitt Romney's middle class I might add.) We have survived though. More importantly, we are better off today than we were four years ago. It may seem like luck, it feels like it sometimes, but I don't think we both would have found better jobs if the climate had been different.
There's something else that's different too. From 2001-2008, I worried about terror attacks on American soil. I worried about soldiers dying for an empty cause. I worried about how the rest of the world viewed my country. I don't really do that anymore because I actually have confidence in our president to do and say the right thing. The previous president never did that for me.
My family is better off now than we were four years ago. I don't understand how people can think that going back to the way it was from 2000-2008 is a GOOD thing. Did anything good happen then? What I hear being promised from Mitt Romney to the middle class (which, if you recall, I am not a part of according to him) is a whole lot of nothing. I guess that means I will get less than nothing. And I will never support a candidate who considers me less than nothing. (I'm a woman on top of that... I guess that leaves me out of everything.)
I am voting for President Obama again because four years ago he gave me hope when I desperately needed it.