You never stop being a parent. Know that, and come to love that, or maybe it's gonna be a rough ride.
My younger daughter is trying. She really is. Made a good go of it, moving out with her boyfriend, both working, apartment, the whole deal.
Frankly, given the absolutely morbid low wages available to them, I was impressed that it worked at all.
Well, it didn't. Times got tough, and young people break down as young people do, and so she's home again.
And that's hard, because I don't have a lot of room, and it costs to do the things needed to get people settled when there isn't a lot of room, with those costs being financial and just personal. And it's hard on her because she knows now. She knows it's not good, and she wants it to be good, and will work for it too.
Hard to not have space. Harder still to know time is passing, opportunity is passing, and the constraints of supporting people conflict with those basic needs we all have. So they go unmet a lot of the time, and I try to ignore it, believing there is a lot of time left, but I age, and I wonder...
We are going to pay big for our folly in economic policy in the US. I am just coming to realize just how large the scope of the problem is!
New jobs are back-filling many of the older ones, not enough to pay to meet the needs of the people though. Each month, our ability to fund our way of life is diminished by just a little bit, and it adds up over time.
30 years plus is a long time, and we are here now, and it's really adding up.
When I left the house, times were not like they are now. Wages were low, but so were the average costs and risks most people were exposed to. While it wasn't enough to really build, it was enough to live, get through the basics, love, play, marry, which I did early on.
Been married well over 20 years now, and I'm thankful for that, but I digress.
We have seriously raised the bar in terms of what we consider "the basics", yet we have not kept opportunity in line with the needs that our future leaders and care givers have to meet both their expectations in life, and our needs to come.
That's right! We all get old, and I'm seriously beginning to wonder whether or not most people really understand the impact of that, in light of where our current policy is taking us.
By all sane measures, we should be investing big in infrastructure. Solar, alcohol fuel (personal favorite, I can't avoid mentioning), Internet, secondary education, rail, and other things we need to operate more efficiently and sustainably, most importantly those things needed to recover self-sufficiency. It's not that we have to do it all, like we basically did before. Would be nice though. Kick 30 years of ass and reinvent the world.
I'm sure up for that, as are the masses doing hair, laundry, fast food, and other basic things for lack of opportunity otherwise.
We are not doing that, and we've gambled away a lot of our wealth, and we've shipped out our means to build more, yet we age...
Our quality of life --basic standards of living are in a steady decline. I think that's obvious.
What I don't think is obvious is the impact of denying our younger people opportunity. Some time from now, we will need those people to sustain the nation, carry our weight, simply because we grow unable to do it ourselves.
We are all young for a time, so that we may help one another. Think about that simple reality, and the mess that is coming.
I worry. I worry a lot.
Most of us grew up in a place where the generation before was building, was capable, and vital, and the up and coming generation was the same, leaving us safe, reasonably secure, wealthy.
Not wealthy in terms of money, but wealthy in terms of our time and ability to do the basic human things we need to have done for us, and that we need to do for others, if the society is to exist in a sustainable way.
That's not happening right now!
I am a Gen-X person, and I see our current builders attacked, devalued, shipped off shore, marginalized, rendered impotent, leaving our up and coming builders and leaders with a very difficult task of building their lives, the nation...
Failure to launch.
Generally speaking, I didn't and do not currently have much. Employment isn't a problem for me now, and I'm thankful for that, but the money --and it's pretty good money just fades in to both my family needs, but the younger people, and older people too!
I don't think I can make enough to secure my future without seriously impacting them, and that's really hard, because I'm a nice guy, and I care, and, if it were me, I would want somebody to do the same.
Maybe they won't be able to. In fact, it's highly likely, and I don't know what that is going to mean, other than it's not going to be good.
So she's trying. Laboring hard, making almost nothing, trying to save, costs and risks draining that away, and with the labor required, where does school fit in? Networking?
Normally, I would have provided a foundation to help with that. You know, do what my parents could not do for me. I really wanted to do that, and busted my ass because I swore that I would give my kids a little boost that I didn't have, because I don't want them to have to do what I had to do to get established and become a working professional.
That isn't easy growing up dirt poor. Very few get it done without some help along the way.
Where's the help now?
Truth is, I got hammered by Health Care. Nobody is going to die, and things are improving, but the nut --that product of my working prime is gone, and the costs are now high, risks still high, and right when it's needed, it's not there, and there it is. Failure to launch.
Kind of hard to launch without some fuel. Had a stock pile, now I don't, and so there is just no launch, just some steady grind toward some goals that seem awfully far away.
And where do they launch to? That's just as ugly as the lack of fuel problem is really. I never once thought of failure, or thought it was hopeless, but a lot of them do. Can't blame 'em either. It's hard to stay positive, and it's really hard to motivate --harder than it was for me at that age.
So I watch, I scheme, I help, she works, she schemes, she helps, and maybe good things will happen. Hoping good things will happen, but down deep, I harbor serious doubt. And it's not my kids. They are good kids! Smart, attractive, passionate, capable, healthy. It's not them at all.
It is me to a point. Failure to grok the politics early enough. That still weighs heavy on my mind, because I checked out of politics until it got ugly, like a lot of us did, and now the latency between policy, effect, remedy, message, etc... is such a bitch, because things take time. Sometimes a lot of time, meaning we might be doomed now, just not really aware. I own that part of it, and am active now. There are a lot of days when I think it just won't impact us on a time scale that will work, but maybe it will impact those in the future, so it's gonna get done dammit!
What will we be doing in 10 years without some serious effort to build? I honestly can't see it the same way I did at that age.
Families? Kids? On these wages, in this economy, risks? Costs?
We will pay for our folly as people, and I don't think it's gonna be pretty.