Touch and Go, Financial Crisis, Re-Approach the Life Comedic, and Less Important Things

Things have been touch and go. Tough and go. Many opportunities to back down and call it a day long before the newness of the day was fully realized. In many respects that's the only difference between me and the twenty three year old child coworker with two kids by two different women being served an arrest warrant on the job. The ability to say "no, this is not all I was meant for. There is more, and I am going to find it even if the effort breaks me today." Other than that, we probably have a lot in common in terms of measurable attributes. Perhaps not even the thought of the action is what sets me on paths differing as much as the knowledge that what I am about to pursue is going to be painful and is going to stretch my physical endurance and patience and is going to leave some unpleasant marks for days to come and the desire to do it anyway. I was the same way in college. My grades did not show it, because of all the classes (sixty percent) I had no stake in, but within my major I had a three nine.

Life outside of college is vastly different. Everything you do in life, you have a stake in. So I suppose that kind of makes me bad at college, but good at life? I do not know exactly, so I will keep on track instead of figuring that out. Things have been tough. Difficult to do. Difficult to plan for. Even more difficult to execute, but I've been doing it. Taking the hard road. Exercising so much more than the path of least resistance for more than the sake of doing things the hard way and for more reason than the hard way often being the only way forward available.

I don't know, invasion of apostrophe, when I'm going to go back on medication. I don't know when it will ever be feasible again. When the trust will develop, because the desperation never is enough on it's own. For stretches it is. For stretches the frustration with verbal communication, and non, is. The hallucinations are. The trust is gone. Eaten away, I suppose. I offer. Tough it out in space.

I've been listening to myself breath. As a hobby. A pastime? It has been uniquely entertaining. A foil to the difficulty and nuisance of hearing my blood go through my veins. I am very much looking forward to winter and the pressure suit and the space boots. Hopefully I'll have a runabout by then. A little automotive goodness so I don't have to traverse miles of hostile, ankle jarring, shin splinting, terrain on a daily basis for a second year in a row, but if I do, it'll be okay because I've already done it. I'm already doing my snow dance.



I don't get the financial crisis. Is there one or is there not? This doesn't feel like a depression. Not that my textbooks explained to me in grade school. Several people I know comment about it on a regular basis. They cite the comedy of television anchors trying to explain a complex system and failing miserably to do anything besides say which way the stock market arrow happens to be pointing. They remind me of meteorologists who simply read off the wind direction and temperature. "Thank you for the timely news CNN and Fox, but if I'd glanced at a stock ticker I could have cut out the middle man on that one", is the vibe I get.

Maybe it's because I fully intend to never have children that I don't worry about the financial future of the United States. Maybe it's because the hole is so, impossible to fully imagine, deep. Maybe it's because my most pressing issues are making enough tokens to pay rent and eat and I don't have the budget to invest in anything much greater and wide reaching than the ground I stand on and the, bothersome, blood in my veins. I don't think that makes me selfish. Having to focus so tightly on square ones doesn't make me inherently more real or down to Earth than anyone else either. Probably narrows my horizons some, but what is my impact beyond those horizons if not negligible, so what does it really, honest to god and every other being in the universe, really really matter if I have no idea what's happening in Tripoli or the songs being danced to by the dollar in it's face off with the peso and the euro?

Not the I do not care at all. All I'm saying is this: if the Dow goes up to a million points I still have to pay my rent. If the Standard and Poors index falls to zero, my rent is still three hundred and fifty dollars a month more than what's in my bank account now. Putting gas in my car is never going to become significantly, permanently, cheaper. Buying food is never going to do likewise. I have no idea what this financial crisis is at this point. I have no interest in it's nuance and no money in it's markets beyond taxes that are not all of my pay (that I can still afford to have a roof over my head with so who the hell cares) and the occasional goods I buy beyond food, so do pardon me if I mentally check out entirely when conversation turns to Wall Street and labor and the economy in general.

Nothing personal, but the day to day scrap pretty much eclipses the back and forth of news media, spin doctors, hustlers, book keepers, pushers, banks, and policy makers. I should probably have a stake in it, but the stake is driven into the ground so far away from me and has nothing to do with keeping my tent up I'll only make the time to check on it a very once in a while and make the time to understand it even less often. Even so, doesn't it strike anyone as slightly odd, the gap between meaningful swings in the market and meaningful world events. Maybe it's a thing not readily apparent to a layman, such as myself, like, such as, south Africa, and education, but it seems the slightest flicker of anything sends people shoving all their money in or ripping all of their money out with the twitchiness of a light switch, and doesn't that undermine the stability of the real life things, the solid objects, and the lives operating on and employed by those real life things? No clue.

Either way, what I do know is that I would have the same issues and problems around and inside of me now with the economy in the toilet, or not in the toilet, or half in the toilet and the other half holding it's hair back, as I would have if the economy were the opposite of whatever the news said it was. So maybe I was wrong. Maybe I do simply not give a fuck.

I've thought about re-entering the stand up with a sixth entry. I think I am calmed down enough to not goad myself into acts of violence by the words coming out of my own mouth. Calmed down enough to take the pill of neurosis and malaise and turn it into something a little light hearted for other's consumption. I think I can do that again. I'm almost ready. Slightly excited to give it another try. I would hope you are too. Oh wait, I am. So that makes three of us. So the three of us will laugh it up later and look on the bright side of trife.

And last but not least, the less important thing. I forgot what it was. Maybe it was that I am still tasking away at projects. Tasking away at promises. At distance. At finding voice. Away and away and away until it's all done and I am officially retired. I haven't written a story in a long time. I've wanted to, but at the same time I have been nerve racked with questions of time and effort and end products and reception. Must get those ducks in a row so I can restart that branch of the factory. The dust is getting alarmingly thick over there and beginning to take on lives of it's own.


///Boards of Canada - "The Color of the Fire slow Sunday sundown music. It is, after all-

approaches

so i'm learning to approach things from the other side of the counter. i've been in the customer service industry for forever and im so used to being blank and open and receptive when it comes to business transactions that im having a hard time shifting into my managerial retail position. im not used to making declarative statements. im not used to making demands. im not used to asking people when i can expect them in my office. and im not used to trying to provide the best service at the lowest price possible.

that last one is the hardest part. if i cut my profit margins as slim as possible i wont be able to afford to keep the store open and people employed. its just that simple. breaking even on merchandise only covers the cost of merchandise! when its all sold and the register closes for the day what's left to turn the lights on tomorrow, buy my groceries for dinner, pay the window washer, and pay for the internet access and software licenses ill need tomorrow is nothing. nothing is left.

so i need to get used to telling people what something will cost THEM instead of what it will cost ME to make it. Let THEM decide if they like the price before trying to cut out corners (and make things more difficult for myself) to deliver them the same thing except cheaper.

Sure. Thats the kind of thinking that probably fucked GM but it didnt help that GMs customers were fucking idiots who swallowed whatever they shat out. Not so, in my little shop. My customers are sharp and frugal. So I welcome the price bending and look forward to figuring out better ways to do things to keep my work load down, my profits up, and quality high as ever... but if i start off cutting rates ill be out of business before i learn anything. ;P

///dntel - "fear of corners" ironically this song was on when the owner and i had a discussion about how to price an order. unfortunately because i started off cutting so many corners in the labor to produce the shirts the owner advised me that i could not offer a discount on the shirt itself. the price quote doubled. the customers walked out on me (but promised to return... i hope they do!). generally an unsatisfactory resolution. but a learning moment i dont intend to squander. the training continues.

a mutual slump

Subject : a mutual slump

Posted Date: : Nov 5, 2005 4:18 PM

I am very tired of not having money. Demoralizing, disheartening, and depressing is what it's like to have no money. You don't care about much of anything and you don't want to work at anything. But you do work, because that is the only way to get out of the slump of negative dollars.

What about life? I have no wealth, no steady state of capital. I have debt. gobs upon gobs of debt that only work will erase. I tell myself that I am tired of being poor, of being on the higher end of the have nots. I tell myself that my kids are going to have everything that I don't have, but that isn't true. It's just a wish. This is not an emo rant, this is just letting off some of the pressure that stacks up over the years when it becomes more and more clear that you are very likely not going to be "successful, grounded, rich, dateable, married, healthy, a grand parent, a good father, provider, on top, stable." The world isn't out to get me. It also is not out to make amends or make things better either.

Don't tell me life isn't bleak and then tell me I have no way to advance myself upward through the class ranks because its just who I've grown to be. You're lieing to yourself if you think everyone gets a fair crack at anything. Life doesn't suck all the time for anyone, but that does not mean life doesnt suck alot of the time for someone.

Difficult days. Not enough is going to change by the time I graduate and not enough minds will change about who I am, how I work, what I know, and what I believe to make a difference in the paths that have been laid out today. Life is like a box of slant rhymes. Or maybe its like a bowl of soup and some people get silver spoons while other people get stirring rods.

What is there to look forward to? The "mutual slump of body and soul"? New beginnings; don't get too excited about those. they always start right where you left off. There is one thing to look forward to and that is consistency.

They may not leave you, but if they do it'll be for similar reasons.

You'll work hard and it won't count for anything much.

No one will give you anything you haven't earned or won't pay for later.

You will always be the best company you'll know.

Beer will always taste like beer, weed will always get you high, and money will always feel like eels in your back pocket, foreign, uncomfortable, and itching to slip away.