Yeah, bankruptcy. That’s an incredibly frightening prospect, isn’t it? Especially given America’s current economical situation. But on the other hand, that’s exactly the attitude that finances are being handled with by almost everybody around me. “Yeah, bankruptcy.” Which is somewhat disheartening, because had my mother not been on the verge of declaring just that, I would never have even thought about it. Perhaps I should still be trying to ignore, because there’s no denying that imagining the state of one’s finances over the next few years is a really depressing thought.

I live with my father, I suppose I should start out with that fact. Not ashamed of it either, because living on my own right now seems like a very, very stupid idea. Financially anyway, but that is beside the point. And together, we pay the bills. Though I got laid off recently, which is never a great thing as far as I’m concerned, but that also meant that I could no longer pay for cable or DSL. So no TV, no internet. For more than a whole month. If you’re thinking, “wow, he must’ve gone insane”, then not only are you correct, but you’re pretty decent at guessing genders.

What’s amazing, though, is just how much I felt the impact of everything during that period of, well, let’s call it retreat. Not that I would do it again; I am not considering getting away from the internet anytime soon (I can see the good in doing so, but the hell if I can accept it).

CNN, Fox News, local news, you name it: all are pouring out like fountains all the facts of the condition of our economy, saying recession, whispering “another Depression”. And frankly, though I can’t speak for anyone else, I am the kind of person who just gets so tired of hearing it that when I do, I don’t hear it at all. “Just shut up, everybody knows we’re doing badly”, I think.

So it’s no surprise that when I get laid off and disconnected from all of those news sources all at once, I definitely start to get it. I stop thinking about the nationwide impact, because I can’t grasp that and believe it at the same time. Locally though… locally it all seems to make sense. Not good sense, and certainly not sense that makes me feel relieved, but sense. Nobody is hiring, not whatsoever. Not unless it’s ungodly hours doing a job that nobody wants to do anyway. New stores are opening, and the ‘Now Hiring’ signs are down within a day, at times. I can’t get change for a twenty at some of the convenience stores I go to, of all things.

But sometimes, when you’re lucky, everything works out. I am now in a much cheaper apartment, I am going into work tomorrow at a new, much closer to home job; and if everything goes well, I’ll even get to start griping about the news networks again.

I can only wonder how well everybody else is faring. But then I see that people are still paying monthly fees for seedboxes, and I can rest assured that most folk are just as well off, if not (assuredly) better than me. And I like it that way.

Y’know. Mostly.