Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Sicker and Tireder

Reading Paul Glastris take on Democratic tactics against Nader, I noted Glastris' desire to fight the political fight based on the issues. I thought I'd take a moment to clarify my take on the issues.


  • Economy This seems obvious to me. For most folks, the past four years have not been good. Clearly the economy was headed downhill when Clinton left office, and 9/11 did nothing to help the economy. However, it is four years post Clinton and three years post 9/11. What is the direction of the economy? Well, I think if you are in a position where corporate upswings make a measurable difference in your earning power, then you are pretty happy. White collar types who are in a position to really benefit from corporate profit expansion are doing pretty good. Of course, these guys are vice-presidents of companies and so on, and they make up a small subset of the populace at large. For folks who are struggling to pay for college, struggling to set aside savings for retirement, struggling to get beyond a check to check existence, this has not been a recovery. Jobs that were once considered upper middle class (by that I mean jobs that make somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000) seem to be evaporating. I'd like to back that up with statistics, but honestly, I cannot find anything that measures it - this is a feeling, based in no small part on my wife's experiences job hunting and my experiences, as well as the experiences of other people in the same range of income. Our out of pocket healthcare costs are rising rapidly, the copays for a doctor visit are going from $10 to $30 over the space of about five years. The price of milk, perhaps the ultimate staple in a family with young kids, has risen to four dollars a gallon. Gasoline to drive ourselves to work and our kids to school has reached $1.75 a gallon for regular unleaded (like any of us can afford high test). The job market is squeezing and squeezing - sure there are plenty of jobs out there, but for the most part, they require me to take a pay cut of at least 10% to 15%. There's also the small fact that companies are hesitant to offer jobs that represent pay cuts to people. They believe that these people will bolt as soon as they can get a better gig - and probably they are right. Oh no, I think for almost anyone making under $100K/year, this economy has gone from bad to worse. For these people, there simply is no recovery happening. This is a strong negative for the president


  • Foreign Policy Okay, this is clearly a very tetchy issue, one on which reasonable people can disagree. For myself, I think the foreign policy is a set of nested objectives. The first and most crucial is this: make America safe from foreign enemies. Second, secure the resources external to America that are required for economic growth. This, however, must only be done in such a way as to not compromise objective one. Third, promote humanitarian and democratic ideals. This, however, must not compromise objectives one and two. So . . . how has Team Bush done? Overall, I think America is safer from alQaeda now than it was on 9/11, and perhaps even when he came to office. The work that has been done to disrupt the financial networks and the elimination of the Taliban has been a good thing. However, I think that the overall terrorist threat has increased. We have engendered so much ill will with our Iraqi adventure that I'd be surprised if there were not more anti-American terrorists now than prior to Bush. So are we safer from terrorism in general? No. Are we safer from North Korea? No. Are we safer from Iran? No.

Thursday, August 19, 2004

My TiVo Season Passes

This is useless information, apropos of nothing, really. I just thought I'd share it as background information about me.

1. West Wing
2. CSI
3. Law and Order
4. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
5. Cold Case
6. Without a Trace
7. Navy NCIS
8. The Daily Show
9. Cowboy Bebop
10. Celebrity Poker Showdown
11. World Poker Tour
12. Star Wars: Clone Wars
13. MythBusters
14. Rescue Me

When football season starts, I'll add NFL Primetime, cause I worship before the altar of Tom Jackson, the only mainstream commentator to say that the Carolina Panthers could win their games against St. Louis, Philly or New England. Though he was sadly wrong on the last, give the man props for backing the Panthers here. When the new TV season starts, I'll also add CSI: New York to the roster.

As with the iPod playlist, I can't tell you what this means. But, there you go.

Something I Have Lost

I had a girlfriend - my first really, truly, meet-the-parents, make plans for our future girlfriend - who once said that her best feature was her "childlike sense of wonder" and that this was something that everyone should have. She was right about that - she definitely had that sense of wonder and it was one of the things about her I loved. At some point I lost my sense of wonder. I'm mostly a cynic, though occasionally I have moments of optimism and hope. I wonder where I lost that sense of wonder. There are still flashes of that wonder. I recall holding each of my girls for the first time. I recall the feeling when they'd fall asleep on me; one of life's truly great moments, and one of the first things kids stop doing as they grow up, sadly. Truly amazing things still make my breath catch. But there is no sense of wonder in the more prosaic. Perhaps that is as it should be, but I do not gawk at sunsets any more. I do not gasp at the sight of a truly beautiful horse galloping. The pedestrian beauty of a pretty stretch of road. All these things seem to pass me by these days. Wonder how I get that back?

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

On Writing and Self

It's funny; when I began this blog, I had so much to say and so much to put out there. Now, almost 9 months later, it's been pretty slow, especially for the last six months. I'm having a hard time conceptualizing what I want to say. Moreover, I'm having a hard time finding a path for myself. I'm mired in a sort of existential funk - unable to do anything or make any changes.

So what do I do? I find myself to a large extent hemmed in by a set of constants that cannot be changed, the largest of which is the fact that as a family, we need almost $4500 per month to live on. Now, with some debt reduction and some (more) belt tightening, we could likely get that figure down to $4000. With a bit of luck, we could get it down to $3500 per month, or approximately $900 per week. That's still pretty steep. So what, then? Writing is never a pursuit designed to make scads of money. I've got a wife and three kids, and between the two of us, we have to make, as it stands now, approximately $82,000 per year combined. If we got that down to the $3500 per month then we'd be talking about $63,500 per year. That's not a great thing either, though it is better.

What's more, the desire to write on my part is an intensely selfish one. It is utterly unimaginable that I could make any money at this (at least any amount that is reasonable) for the first year. That means my writing would be fulfilling to me, but offer little to my family. There's more, though. We have to talk about healthcare. Okay, does anyone think there is an adult couple where neither is hypertensive, depressed, anxious, ulcer ridden, stressed, arthritic or otherwise saddled with a chronic illness? How about also adding in that you can have neither weight nor cholesterol problems? Yeah, I don't think so either. Still, it seems that for one to get private health insurance, these are requirements. Now in my family, I have high blood pressure and anxiety/depression. My wife, better yet, is HIV positive. Reckon there's any way in the world we can get private insurance without paying something like $2000 per month with deductibles approximately equal to the cost of my house? Yeah, me neither. For those concerned, by the way, my wife has likely been positive since Reagan was president and has never shown the slightest sign of illness. She's what is referred to as a "long-term non-progressor", a relatively recent designation that has been applied to a phenomenon no one understands. There are a number of people like my wife out there, and for rather obvious reasons, many are deeply interested in the why's of her lack of illness. Anyway, back to the show. For these reasons, healthcare as guaranteed by work in a corporate world, is crucial. Problem is, neither of us is particularly enthralled by corporate work. My wife is running a nascent but successful online toy store, Fun For Thought Toys, and she's in no mood to work in the corporate world, though she does so to help make ends meet. If I were to take up writing, this would place the burden on my wife to work the corporate thing more intensely, releasing me to write. That's a pretty big sacrifice and one I'm not sure I'm willing to ask for.

Which brings me to the crux of my problem. Why am I unwilling to ask for such a sacrifice to chase my vision of happiness? Simple - my vision of happiness changes roughly quarterly. That's usually the amount of time it takes for me to dig into whatever it is that I want to do and realize that it isn't going to fall into my lap. Like all things, one's path in life takes work. I'm generally unwilling to do that work. About the only things that I have ever put a tremendous amount of effort into are reading and my marriage, and the latter is still, arguably, suffering from my lack of attention (not suffering badly, but it could use more effort from me, no doubt). Even my kids, who I love almost beyond reason, get short shrift from me at times. I don't make the effort to take kids to soccer, or dance or Brownies or whatever. I do not spend enough time reading to my kids. I do not spend enough time teaching them to fish or play baseball or whatever. I have my own agenda and I tend to promote that over theirs a lot of the time. Basically, I'm a seriously selfish person a lot of the time. It's a flaw. Anyway, to get back to where I was, I tend to pick up and drop new "life paths" fairly frequently, though to be fair, they generally are the same set of things: programmer, writer, teacher or "happy idiot" corporate drone. Is this time the real thing? I usually think so . . . so that's no gauge. Or should I make the commitment and use the sacrifice others make for me the goad to keep me at it?

I wish I understood what motivates me. I wish I understood more about myself. I've been told I'm very self-aware, and I think that is true. But my deepest motivations are elusive to me. Why am I lazy? Why can I not commit and discipline myself? Why am I so selfish?

Oh hell, I'm sure no one out there is interested in my navel gazing. Be well, all, and perhaps I will spew forth something soon that is more in line with the ideas that I started this with.