Festivity
I went to a small party last night, for a friend who was briefly back in town. The party-goers were all thirty-something liberal over-educated white people like me and Cook - a freelance reporter, a musician, a teacher, a non-profit employee, etc. It was a nice party, and there was a warm, low-key feeling to the event, but over everything hung a pall of fear. Everybody was talking about their dim prospects for the future.
Cook and I don't have a lot of friends in Portland, and we're scrambling just to keep up with our lives at the moment, so we really haven't talked to a lot of people about the economy, and the people we talk to aren't generally in the same boat as we are; they're employed people worried about losing their benefits or their jobs. At my internship workplace, they're having regular meetings to figure out creative ways to trim the budget without laying anyone off. At Cook's workplace, they're laying people off. I find it's changed the way I look at people. Listening to my coworkers complaining about their pensions disappearing, I find myself bitterly sneering (silently) "well, at least you have a damn pension. And HEALTH INSURANCE!!!! And how exactly are you more deserving of those things than I am? How the hell did you get this job, anyway?" I have no sympathy.* And let's not even start talking about all the Baby Boomers who tell me they now have to work 5 years longer than they'd planned, which oh by the way means one less job available for the next generation of workers.
But at this party, everyone was like us. Employed, yes, and paying their rent, but only just barely, through part-time or insecure work without benefits, unable to get health insurance due to the terrible sin of having reached 30. Nobody is dreaming of the future anymore. We're crouching under the table, hoping the future will only crush us a little bit. It was really sad.
* Okay, I do, but not that much. I'm sure it's awful to blithely take all your benefits for granted, have your life unfold comfortably before you in the expected manner (college, a career, a family, a house, etc.) without too much effort on your part, and then WHAM! have the rug yanked out from under you. For those of us who have been early disabused of the notion that anything will unfold comfortably in our lives, this is not so much of a surprise. But we're also pretty freaking demoralized.
Cook and I don't have a lot of friends in Portland, and we're scrambling just to keep up with our lives at the moment, so we really haven't talked to a lot of people about the economy, and the people we talk to aren't generally in the same boat as we are; they're employed people worried about losing their benefits or their jobs. At my internship workplace, they're having regular meetings to figure out creative ways to trim the budget without laying anyone off. At Cook's workplace, they're laying people off. I find it's changed the way I look at people. Listening to my coworkers complaining about their pensions disappearing, I find myself bitterly sneering (silently) "well, at least you have a damn pension. And HEALTH INSURANCE!!!! And how exactly are you more deserving of those things than I am? How the hell did you get this job, anyway?" I have no sympathy.* And let's not even start talking about all the Baby Boomers who tell me they now have to work 5 years longer than they'd planned, which oh by the way means one less job available for the next generation of workers.
But at this party, everyone was like us. Employed, yes, and paying their rent, but only just barely, through part-time or insecure work without benefits, unable to get health insurance due to the terrible sin of having reached 30. Nobody is dreaming of the future anymore. We're crouching under the table, hoping the future will only crush us a little bit. It was really sad.
* Okay, I do, but not that much. I'm sure it's awful to blithely take all your benefits for granted, have your life unfold comfortably before you in the expected manner (college, a career, a family, a house, etc.) without too much effort on your part, and then WHAM! have the rug yanked out from under you. For those of us who have been early disabused of the notion that anything will unfold comfortably in our lives, this is not so much of a surprise. But we're also pretty freaking demoralized.
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