“So, I guess this is just the way things are now.”
I was waiting with a friend of mine for the tow truck to pull his truck in and park it. It, my friend’s truck, had broken down on the freeway after most autoshops are closed, so home it came to be towed in the morning somewhere else. We had been talking about how we probably wouldn’t get to retire like our parent before us, and the state of the economy, while waiting for the truck. We talked about how we kept waiting for the economy to get better. How, at first we , as in the entire world, couldn’t believe how bad things were. And now, of course, we’re all very angry about it. As we talked about it, my friend and I realized it was like the entire world, or maybe just the industrial world, was going through the stages of grieving for an economy that no longer exists.
The stages of grieving, in case you’ve forgotten, are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
I think we went through Bargaining before we went through Anger. Our economists, our government leaders, our business people, we all denied it at first of course, and then tried to bargain it away. Now we’re angry – oh so very angry. We’ve had our livelihoods stolen from us, we feel. How could this happen? Who is to blame? Someone must pay! We are all so very, very angry. And we feel helpless. And still angry.
Eventually, after the anger dissipates, we’ll be depressed. But will that come before or after Christmas?
Recently the LA Times had an article that said our economy has gone up 2.5% and they were so excited! (Part of Bargaining? Part of Denial?). I wake up in the morning to NPR’s Morning Edition and hear the economists talk about going into a second recession and I’m surprised because I didn’t think we’d ever left the first. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my personal recession started a few years ago and I never got out of it – I don’t know where people are getting money for iPads or cars or homes or vacations or anything. My client list has decreased. The clients I have are calling less. And the hours at my one part-time job have been cut. And I KNOW I’m not the only one out there going through all this. And they say our economy is growing? Or that it ever left the recession first time round?
What do you expect of theorists? Personally, I think they’re all still stuck in Denial and haven’t moved on yet to where the rest of us are.
Not sure when the Depression will break in. Will it be before Christmas, because we all realize we’re not getting the extra hours or extra job to pull in much needed holiday funds so we won’t be able to spend money on holiday things? Or will it be after Christmas and the holidays when we realize we spent what little we had left in savings on holiday stuff and now January’s rent is staring us in the face and not letting us alone for another minute?
Whether it arrives in mid December or late December, it will arrive. And if you’ve never been depressed before, be prepared for an entire world that doesn’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning, because what’s the use? Not like we’re going to make any money anyway, right?
You won’t believe it at the time, but eventually the depression passes. Because if it doesn’t, you’ll die. But once the depression passes you realize you just need to get up, get dressed and do your best each day. And that’s all you can do. It’s all you’ve ever been able to do, really, but now you know it truly.
And then you’ll have hit Acceptance. You’ll accept that your credit is crap now, that you’ve moved into your parents’ basement and that the tech toys of 2011 will be the last you purchase for a good 5-10 years because let’s face it, rent and grocery bills are more important than that shiny eReader or SmartPhone that neither you nor your parents can afford for you to have anymore. And if you still have a car, it will not be new, you’ll do what you can on duct tape and paper clips to keep it going, or get ride of it and get a bike or moped to get to work because you can’t afford to pay for a hunk of metal, insurance, gas, parking tickets and upkeep, and the darn thing keeps costing too much to drive anywhere anyway. So, you find a job close to home, if you freelance, you keep it all to telecommute or meetings in the neighborhood, and it saves time and money and the environment. You don’t have the cool stereo system anymore, but you no longer drive two hours each way to work, anyway.
Because that’s just the way things are now.
As my friend and I were talking, the tow truck driver parked the truck and made sure of the AAA card number from my friend’s husband, then waved and drove off.
“We really need to get a new car, but that will just have to wait,” my friend sighed.
And then we went into dinner, a home cooked meal and not out anywhere, because that’s just the way things are now.
No comments:
Post a Comment