This Economy Is Cramping My Style

If you read this blog often, there are two things that are probably true:

1. You love me. (Thanks.)
2. You know I'm often whining about being broke.

I thought I had the market cornered on broke bloggers. Everyone else I read had good jobs, traveled to cool cities, and generally was blogging about all kinds of nightlife activities. Things have been changing lately though. Favorite bloggers everywhere seem to be victims of layoffs, downsizing, whatever you want to call it; the crunch is everywhere. Suddenly, I'm starting to feel like one of the lucky ones. Except that things aren't so certain in my industry either, so I'm not resting all too easily myself.

On a more tedious note, I've always given myself a hard time for not being a better wage earner for my family. My perspective on this is changing as well. Nowadays, I'm in the company of a lot of very talented, highly educated friends who are either jobless or hanging on to what they've got for dear life. It's scary for so many of us right now. I used to think that if I ever lost my job, it wouldn't be too hard to replace it with another that paid about the same. Now I'm not so sure. Those $8-10 per hour jobs might be in higher demand than ever (college grads willing to take anything at this point), and even those jobs might be cutting budgets as well. Anyway, while Paige is pregnant with our baby Sam, it's less about the hourly wage and more about the health insurance. I'm holding on "in quiet desperation," as the song goes.

Hopefully the experts are wrong and 2009 will be much better than expected. We're all good people just trying to pay our bills, feed our families, and smile as often as possible. Here's to all good things for my friends and neighbors. It's been a tough year. We deserve a good 2009.