I have been coming to this site since election night 2004 when I stumbled onto it out of sheer desperation to find a community that I could share my frustration and confusion with regarding that terrible night. I have since been checking in daily and this site has become a tremendous resource in my life. I thank you all for making this place great.
As far as this diary is concerned the intent is to share a bit of perspective regarding the life of an early thirties nobody in America. I am not rich or powerful nor am I poor or helpless. I am a middle of the pack kind of guy and that is all right with me. I am happily married to my college girlfriend and we have a one year old son who is the joy of our lives. I would characterize us as simple people, very "hobbit-like" if you will and we have never gone in for "conspicuous consumption" or anything like that. We have gone from making a combined income of over $200,000 back in 2001-2004 (when we were both working and childless) to our current situation whereby my wife is home with our son and I work for about $50,000.
However, as we lived more or less on about $30,000 even when we were making the big bucks we have been able to cope with this 75% household pay cut over the last several years. I went from owning a business and making six figures to returning to corporate America after the sale of that business. And I was shocked at how little corporate America was offering compared to how much time and effort they demanded. It had been 6 years since I had depended on corporate America for a paycheck and it was amazing how much the employee / employer power dynamic had shifted in favor of the employer over that short a time frame. I was making substantially more when I was in the corporate environment six years earlier in the same industry at a time when the cost of living was far cheaper. Fortunately we had saved a good deal of money when times were good, enough so that we own our home free and clear (not even close to being a mcmansion, which is fine with us) and we have a good amount of reserves in the bank, although we are far from rich. I share this with you because it is key part of my story and a defining factor of my current philosophy. You see for us, once we had gotten to the point where we had a decent surplus in the bank and were not in the "paycheck to paycheck" situation the process of making more became extremely unsatisfying as we felt as if we were on a never ending treadmill to spend our lives bolstering these reserves amid an increasingly hostile saving and economic environment for the average corporate worker.
So, in the present, I really struggle with being motivated by the current economic situation in this country whereby corporate America calls all the shots and demands longer working hours for less pay and reduced benefits and we all accept it because most of us are not in any position to bargain for a better deal. And a lot of desperate workers out there are eating each other alive, practically tripping over themselves to hold onto their increasingly shitty jobs in this race to the bottom.
As a bit of background, let me say that when we first started out after graduation in 1997 our goal was to get rich. We scrimped and saved and sacrificed the present for the future and it did work. Our savings account grew and grew and I thought we were on our way. We lived super cheap.....renting cheap studio apartments, buying 10 year old cars for a few thousand bucks a piece, never eating out or traveling but instead paying ourselves first and socking away nearly 80% of our combined income.
We invested our surplus in stocks in the late nineties and early 2000’s period and due largely to our tightwad instincts (whereby we refused to pay more than reasonably calculated fair value for any equity) we came through the dot.com bubble burst without losing a penny. We were not invested in "new economy" companies such as Amazon.com or Lucent Technologies or Cisco Systems which were too confusing to understand and way too expensive.
We were attracted to boring companies such as Sysco Foods, Patterson Dental and SCP Pool Corp., companies I could understand and have a reasonable chance of valuing. We were in and out of retailers such as Pier One, Linens N Things, Dollar General or Casey’s General Stores as they fluctuated up and down by buying low and selling high a few times every year. Or Lowes back in 2000 when it traded at half the relative valuation of Home Depot even though it had a newer nicer base of stores and a smaller store base from which to grow practically guaranteeing a faster growth rate. I was in love with the whole educational company industry for a while and had positions in Devry Inc. and Corinthian Colleges when they ran into problems and became cheap.
I fashioned myself as a young Warren Buffett and was constantly running through company profiles, ordering the annual reports of the ones I thought I could understand and analyzing them one by one. I probably have read through 5,000 annual reports since 1998. In short, if I wasn’t working at my job(s), I was holed up in a library reading annual reports and I thought these were the only "practical" ways to spend one’s time even though I was not really enjoying myself. Even in my down time, when I wanted to read for relaxation I gorged myself on biographies of billionaires such as Warren Buffett, Wayne Huzienga, Larry Tisch, Sam Walton and (it pains me to say it) Rupert Murdoch. These were my heroes and I read and re-read their stories hoping to glean any nugget of information that I could use in my quest for wealth. My time and life was spent in the pursuit of money.....not for consumption but so that I could attain financial freedom and travel and not have to work.
Politics were not even a blip of a concern for me at that point as I considered it all irrelevant to my goal of getting rich. I did not even vote until the 2000 presidential election where I am proud to say I pulled the lever for Al Gore. The notable thing about that was that I come from a republican family all the way through as does my wife. I had never cared an ounce for politics before and my wife and I had never had a discussion about politics prior to 2000 as far as I can remember. And my thinking up to that point was probably more aligned with right wing talking points due to my family and my strong belief in the "American dream". That being said, the only reason I voted at all in the 2000 election was not because I cared about the issues or was even aware of what the issues were. I drove myself down to the voter registration office, registered, and showed up and stood in line on election day to vote for the first time ever solely because I utterly loathed and despised George W. Bush. I did not even know anything about the guy but from the first time I ever saw his face on television during the campaign and heard him speak I hated his guts. It was an almost visceral reaction having nothing to do with logic or reason and I cannot explain it to this day but he just turned my stomach the wrong way. I guess I was always a progressive at heart even before I knew what that meant. Anyway, at the mere sight of "W" my scumbag alarm went off and, especially in hindsight, the fact that I pulled the lever for Gore (even though I did not know why I was doing it at the time) is something of which I am extremely proud of.
The point to all this is that after I broke the 30 year old barrier and our son was born, I realized how crazy my priorities were and my philosophy began to change. What I saw occurring on the political side only contributed to my awakening as I was now paying attention and saw government step aside and allow corporations to run roughshod over "we the people" with legislation that, taken as a whole, was and is designed to literally rob of us our chance at getting ahead or, for many of us, even of the chance to live our life with dignity. I saw our government make it easier for those with more than they could ever need and harder for those who don’t have enough to meet their needs. And I began to realize that the game, as set up currently, is rigged. And when we invaded Iraq I exploded and began having intense political debates with family members. To this day our family relationships are strained because of this huge chasm that was revealed between our way thinking. (So much for chimpy the "uniter"). I began to rebel against the system, at least in thought. And I began to realize that with government like this in place that George Carlin was right when he said "....they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it....".
In my opinion, the biggest failure of the rightwing agenda is that it does not recognize or care that we all only have one precious life to live and not only that, the time you do have is not guaranteed by any means. At any moment we could be cut down by any one of many accidents or health problems. And yet most of us are forced to spend the better part of our lives working and toiling and a lot of us are doing something we hate for not very much money when you think about it. We are literally giving up our lives for a few more pieces of paper that we in turn have to send off to the oil companies, the banks, the utility and insurance interests and such. One day I was driving in my car and was struck by lyrics to a Pink Floyd song entitled "Free Four" that go "...the memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime...". I began to really appreciate the fleeting nature of life and could not help but think that what I was doing currently were not the kind of memories I wanted to look back on when (and if) I made it to old age.
As part of my mental rebellion I decided to quit my second job and put away the annual reports for a while and explore those things that I had felt a spark of enthusiasm for but had swept aside as being "indulgent" or "impractical". I really began to think about my life and how I wanted to spend my time and began to clarify what was important to me and that which creates Joy in myself. And it all began to become clear.
For myself, I realized that what creates Joy in me is my family.......my wife and our son. I love spending time with them and I would define success for me as the degree to which I can organize my life so that I can maximize my time with them. Every minute I spend away from them earning dollars in a cubicle is a failure to me (although if you ask the average American he would say that those "productive" hours are my most successful). Every moment I spend in companionship with those that I love and understand are moments of success. That is so radically different than what most in our society would define as success which in 9 out of 10 cases would consist solely of the material component and would completely ignore the "Joy" component.
Anyway, all of this led me to one conclusion which is; Our system is screwing us big time. It is failing us. Most of us are stuck on a treadmill that we can’t get off and we cannot pursue those things to the degree that we would like that bring us Joy because we have to give up our lives in order to "make a living". How many mothers or fathers are too busy to spend the type of quality time that they desire with their children? How many people out there would like to start a business doing something they are good at and would enjoy but cannot afford to quit and lose the health insurance? How much of our lives do we have to give up so that some fat fuck CEO can buy his third vacation home and his 5th trophy wife?
I am not against nor above hard work and realize that you need to be a productive member of society, but given the unpredictable nature of life and the fact that we only have one shot here it would just seem rational to me that it would make more sense to structure our society so that we had tremendous social safety nets that would provide us with protection against a catastrophic health problem or other life events that sets us back. I think many in our culture have forgotten or do not realize that the purpose of an economy in a society is not to organize it so that a few can live like kings at the expense of the many but to organize economic activity so that the greatest amount of people can have the highest quality of life possible. If that means that our tax system is set up in such a way that Bill Gates can accumulate only a 10 billion dollar fortune instead of a 50 billion dollar fortune than so be it. Do you really think that he would have been any less motivated to work under a system like that when he can still get fabulously wealthy on a relative basis?
The wingnuts (and maybe some Kossacks as well) would call me a socialist since I am for a system that flattens out the curve a bit and reduces the gap between the rich elite and the rest of us. I say it just makes more sense to have a strong middle class with good disposable income and pooled risk systems set up such as Universal Healthcare and good pensions and labor laws and working hours that enable people to enjoy their one and only life while earning a livable wage for a reasonable amount of effort. Not work like dogs (or slaves) just so that they can barely keep up with the ever increasing costs of living. I saw a comment posted here a few weeks ago in which the poster said that he works in the same job as his father worked at the same company and yet when his/her father bought their home he paid 1.5 times his yearly salary for it (in the 70’s I believe) and if the poster were to buy the same house today it would cost more than 8x his/her yearly salary and he/she is in the SAME JOB!!!! With the SAME COMPANY!!! In the exact same geographic location. The exact same house! Now that is what I would call an apples to apples comparison!
And that is the crux of the problem. Our labor is not worth anything anymore thanks to a multi-decade, systematic effort by the right wing of this country. These policies are literally stealing our lives out from under us. We worship on the alter of the almighty dollar in this society and anything that does not involve making money or learning a "marketable" skill (which we can use to make money) is considered a waste of time or an indulgence in this country. My father in law (a right-winger through and through) sneers at me like I am a fool when he hears how much time I spend pursuing my (unpaid) interests. To him (and to many, I am sure) it is a waste of time since there is no "practical" application for it. Forget about the Joy those hobbies bring, I would be better off learning how to golf according to him since I could "use" that in business.
I reject the commercialization of my life and the stealing of my joy to sacrifice it on the altar of making money. I am not against making money, but I am against spending my life doing things I hate and interacting with people I despise just to chase it. I will live simply and focus on what is important. I will realize my place in the long string of history of mankind and realize that I am just passing through on this planet and the fact that I make $50,000 or $250,000 is irrelevant in the big scheme of things. Imagine a guy who lived back in 1806 sitting in his house with no electricity and stressing out over his level of income or his social status in society. Maybe he was upset because his neighbor had a nicer horse cart than him. From the perspective of today these concerns which preoccupied his living moments seem pretty silly and irrelevant. Imagine if he went beyond those concerns and spent his life in pursuit of Joy and meaning. Now that would be a victorious existence!
I will try to seek out those elusive stabs of JOY and when I experience it (maybe during an afternoon at the park with my wife and son) I will appreciate it and feel a connection with all those humans who have experienced the joy of existence before me down throughout history. Those moments have meaning and resonate into eternity. When I am at my end I will be comforted with their memory. The excellent long run I went on yesterday with bright sunshine and cool air and good music and that feeling of being really and truly alive.....feeling my body working like a machine and my mind open and clear.....that is something that can never be taken from me and it is moments such as those that I live for.
For many of us, however, as the cost of living soars (housing, education, health insurance, energy, quality food) and our labor becomes worth less and less I see a danger of those moments slipping away as we have to spend more and more time on the work treadmill just trying to keep from falling behind. And this is all occurring against a backdrop of 100 million dollar per year CEO’s and an elite ruling class that continues to siphon more and more wealth into their hands at the expense of the hardworking middle class which is really the backbone of this great nation. The corporatists are bleeding us dry and the politicians are helping them do it.....as long as they can get a piece for themselves.
There is a class war going on which most of us here realize. And it is time we start to fight back and demand our fair share. In the form of Universal Healthcare. Livable Wages. Real Pensions. Affordable Education. Extended Maternity Leaves. Reasonable Work Hours. Sound Energy Plans. Federally funded political campaigns. A reduction in the Military-Industrial complex. The elimination of lobbyists. Verifiable voting systems. Funded social security accounts. An emphasis on Simple Living. Things like that. So we can spend our lives maximizing our potential as human beings by maximizing the energy spent in the pursuit of Joy rather than maximizing our energy spent in the pursuit of pieces of paper called dollars that get taken from us as soon as we make them. Those dollars may hold such allure in this place and time in our history but in reality they are something that future civilizations will look back on and call irrelevant.