Here in the U.S. it seems like bad news has been coming pretty steadily since—oh, about 9/11. Endless war, everybody hates us, massive problems—energy, immigration, education, health care— we don’t believe we’ll actually solve.
Then the economy started to tank—for writers before anybody else. Good reporters getting laid off, then great ones, from once-great newspapers. What are reporters going to do without jobs? What are we going to do without reporters?
And a bad year for Wall Street and the housing market bust and mortgage foreclosures and Fannie and Freddie and the banking meltdown and the big bailout that the Dow Jones thanked us for by dropping 157 points on Friday.
It’s been enough bad news, enough groping for rock bottom, enough comparisons to the Great Depression, that it’s becoming a lifestyle called the crash position.
Here’s what I’ve been doing more and more over the last couple of years (and even more over the last few months):
• Lifting weights and working out a lot, for the first time in my life. Depending on how bad things go, physical fitness could be more important than mental.
• Facebooking and Linking In. Career strategist Marilyn Moats Kennedy used to say you weren’t ready to be laid off if you didn’t have 100 people in your Rolodex who would call you back within 24 hours. Same diff today, but now it’s “Friends” on Facebook, and it’s 10 minutes.
• Being very fucking nice. There’s karma, and there's connections. I used to start fights on my blog to get people to read. The next time I go after somebody here, you can bet they’ll really have it coming.
• Reading about long-ago calamities in faraway places. My favorite book in the last year was about the explosion that leveled Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1917.
• Drinking. Not all the time—there’s too much else to be done, and hangovers and anxiety don’t mix—but in great gulps, as if every swallow could be the last before somebody yells, Run!
• Thinking weird thoughts about the few rich people I know. Thoughts like, “He wouldn’t put Scout through college, but he’d feed her if she were starving, wouldn’t he?”
• Golfing a lot. I don’t enjoy playing golf any more or less than I ever did, but I now have a heavy psychological need to have a tee time on the calendar.
• Looking for younger people to hang around. People so young their dreams are still noisy enough to drown out the daily news.
• Theorizing hopefully that a 200 beats-per-minute resting heart rate gives my heart a “workout.”
• Planning big trips to far-off places on the theory that things can’t be going to shit if I’m still planning to ride a motorcycle … well, okay, to Halifax.
• Going to lunch with everyone who asks me—and sometimes even asking others to lunch. These lunches generally resemble a boxers’ clinch. Guess who’s on the ropes? So and so and so and so. There but for the grace of God … I’m not on the ropes yet. Are you on the ropes yet? No? Good! GOOD! We’re not on the ropes yet! Let’s hope we stay off the ropes! If you get on the ropes I’ll help you! If I get on the ropes you’ll help me!
• Napping every day. One wants to be rested for Armageddon.
• Keeping up with every last up and down of the national election as if it’s part of my job—as if, if my candidate wins, maybe I can stop worrying so much.
• Trying to justify every last thing I do, from golfing to napping to election-watching, as being a strategic part of some master Homeland Security Effort on my part.
And if you think that’s nuts, you should hear some of the things I’m thinking about doing:
• Backing up my blog on the chance that it’ll be only the backed-up blogs that future archaeologists have access to.
• Contributing monthly to the $200 cash Cristie has confessed to stashing somewhere in the house. (This is made difficult because she won’t tell me where it is.)
• Finding a psychologist who will help me transfer my grinding fear into a “sense of economic adventure.”
• Giving Scout speeches designed to lower her expectations: “But what if there isn’t any such thing as ballet when you grow up? And what if the government can’t afford to have firefighters?”
• I’m even thinking of admitting to my readers how scared I am all the time … and seeing if they’re scared too. But that’s a last resort. My personal brand as a devil-may-care freelance writer may be one of the things that's keeping the devil at the gates so far …..
And but do I wonder: How are others reacting to this steady march of doom? And more to the point: How are they not?
There are days when I, too, feel like the grim reaper personified, on days when the seemingly millions of horrible things happening all over the world and shouted incessantly on the news threaten to become an overwhelming tidal wave of doom and end of days depression.
Then, the cat throws up on my bed…or the toilet overflows…or my niece leaves a message on my answering maching telling me she rode her bike for the first time without the training wheels today.
Those are the small, simple moments when perspective comes back into the picture, and reminds me that humanity has been on the brink of “armageddon” an awful lot of times since this big, messy dance started, and we’re still here.
For some inexplicable reason, and against seemingly impossible odds, the human capacity for survival in the face of the most scary, awful, challenging situations appears to be inexhaustible.
But I think your list is still pretty good. Even if we weren’t on the brink of annihilating ourselves on a daily basis these would be good things to do (well except maybe for that weird Homeland Security thing) and especially when things are uncertain, doing things to celebrate the everday things in life is a good plan.
To your list I might add one additional item that’s implicitly included in there but not stated outright: “Keeping my sense of humour, and looking for at least one reason every single day to laugh until my stomach hurts.”
It’s scary and frustrating. I pay close attention but continue to make time to play with my daughter and delight in her laughter. As long as there is laughter and love in our house, I believe we can handle anything. (But yes, I do call our financial advisor regularly.)
And Susan, your great uncle’s advice probably comes in handy, too.
http://thoughtsfromthetrenches.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/why-worry/
My 10-month-old son props himself up on an ottoman and starts bouncing his butt to the beat the second you put music on. He says “dada” incessantly, and sometimes even associates it with me. Some nights he still falls asleep with his head on my shoulder. When I leave for work some mornings, my wife props him up in his bedroom window and he stands there in nothing but his diaper smiling and waving. And no matter what troubles follow me home, the smile on his face stops them dead at the door.
Of course, when he’s 14 and the world is going to hell yet again I’m pretty sure I won’t have such a relaxed perspective. But that’s not now.
Gonzo, thanks for that!!! What is funny is that I forgot about his advice this morning! Thanks for reminding me. 🙂
Gonzo, thanks for that!!! What is funny is that I forgot about his advice this morning! Thanks for reminding me. 🙂
A wise family member responds ….
Well, I remember when:
Somewhere in the 50’s when my parents’ borrowed (because they couldn’t get it anywhere else) money from my personal savings to purchase some article that was desperately needed for the house; like maybe a well water pump or the like. I was about 10, so it wasn’t exactly a numbered Swiss account they were tapping. But one person’s barrel bottom is another person’s full barrel.
In the late 60’s when Chicago was literally burning in protest and my military boot camp was scheduled to go put it out and I had to think about supporting a young wife and baby on $130/month while doing it, and damn I didn’t even know what a financial consultant was.
During the early 70’s when I got out of the army into a economic slump, recession or whatever they called it in those days, where there were no jobs and the economy was in the shitter and I landed a $3.50/hour (normally $3.25 but you got your “military obligation” satisfied, Mr. VN hero) job just in time to buy food for the next month, cause I didn’t want to sign up for unemployment or food stamps.
And the mid 80’s when the company that I moved my family 1000 miles to work for decided to quit doing business, primarily cause all the bosses had made a fortune prior to that and the economy was tanking again anyway. And oh buy the way would I stick around long enough to sell off the office furniture and turn out the lights one last time. Yes we’ll pay you an extra month to do that.
And the early 90’s when many economies around the world tanked again. Shit somehow that one breezed me by, how did that happen.
And the early 00’s when the company I was running was sucked up by a Huston oil related conglomerate and we became a burden to them and I learned how to down size a company quickly but wasn’t smart enough to realize that I would be part of the downsize once I got rid of the rest.
And recent times when I got a case of the personal stupid’s and started over one more time at 58.
What’s my point??
Shit seems to happen about every 10 years, but it’s really just the same old shit, sometimes it just smells a little different. And this time round it ain’t even happened, so far it’s just a fart in the wind. Albeit a brain fart.
So the moral of my little story is:
Don’t go smellin the shit until you got to. Life’s too short. And ya maybe you should check with your financial consultant too J I still don’t have one so I can’t.
Down here in God’s own beautiful playground (also known as Australia), we laugh at the global recession your greedy Wall Street heroes and heroines have created.
Laugh. Truly.
Because our governments had the foresight many moons ago to stop our financial institutions from doing stupid stuff in the name of greed.
Sure, we have CEOs on disgustingly high salaries and with gross golden handshakes even when they are gotten rid of due to atrocious performance. We hate that aspect of US business culture that has crept into the Aussie way of doing business.
But we are sure not tanking the way you guys are.
Which makes me feel sad for the people I really *do* like, like Murray and Holtz and Benson and Pigott and a whole swag of others.
But as Mrs BetterComms says sagely at times like these:
“Go take a shower, you stink! And have a shave!!”
Love from the Adelaide Hills, Dave, and drop me a line — Melcrum aren’t interested in Social Media workshops in 2009, it would seem…
Lee, I say it over and over about America and its attitude about credit, its contempt for gravity, its dismissal of the notions of sustainability and LIMITS: We just can’t help ourselves.
Don’t feel sorry for us. (And don’t get cocky; we may be asstards, but we may also be big enough to drag you guys into the sea.)
I will be in touch re workshops.
DM