Last night I debuted my blog on facebook. This was also how I outed myself to the world at large (or at least my facebook friends) as unemployed.
The response was what you would expect. A number of condolences, some hang in theres, a fair amount of surprise/tell me more, and, I would guess, not a lot of people actually taking the time to leave the comfort of facebook to read my blog. Oh, and I had a few congratulations/you are capable enough to do anything you put your mind to. These were the responses I valued the most, and they'll get attention in their own post soon enough.
One response to my post was a comment blaming my current predicament, which is representative of the current state of our country, on the baby boomers. I pondered for a moment, wrote my friend for clarification, and confirmed my suspicion that what he meant by this was that there are simply too many people in the baby boomer generation, those people parented my generation, and now here my generation sits: jobless, money-less, with uncertain futures, and being the first generation that is not expected to do better than our parents.
Okay, there is logic in this line of thought. There ARE a lot of baby boomers. The DID have a lot of kids. And those kids DO make up the current generation of laid-off professionals and the newly-graduated unemployed.
But really, what did the baby boomers do? They didn't choose to be born when they were. And you can't really blame their parents either- it is a human being's biological function in life to procreate (despite our having evolved beyond this in many ways). So who really IS at fault? Well, our government, of course.
That's right. The U.S. government chose to fight in World War II, and that war directly resulted in the baby boom. Were we a peaceful Utopian society I would still have a job today. Or I wouldn't exist. Either way, I wouldn't be writing about my unemployed life, and our country wouldn't be in this mess.
So the moral of this story is this: War is bad. Our government is corrupt. Down with the man, he ruins everything.
All that talk about the social security going bankrupt? That's their fault too. And energy prices, and the real estate bubble and the new Beetle.
It's like something caught in the throat. It'll all be better when disgorged.
I agree that it is the baby boomers and the governments fault, just not in the connection you've drawn. It was the baby boomers embrace of Reaganomics and Neo-Con foreign policy over the last 30 years that created the current economic situation we are in. Had we focused more of our policy towards the greater good rather than the fattening of the bank accounts of the few and a defense budget of world-conquest proportions then we would likely be in a much better economic situation and you and the other 10%+ of the population that are unemployed would not be facing such a hardship.
Let me know if there's anything I can do aside from keep my eyes/ears open for employment opportunities for you. And I agree with those that say you are capable of doing whatever you want. May your freetime give you the chance to explore avenues which bring you joy and which you otherwise would not have been able to follow!
"Most notable winners encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They win because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."- B.C. Forbes
You are a winner, Sivan. I have seen you overcome challenges over the years. If anyone I know can attain their dreams and goals in life, it is you. I know how discouraging it is to be unemployed. And I have found in my personal experience that when I decided to not have the victim mentality, even though it was hard to get over, things started to turn around. I just re-posted an article on facebook that helped me out, and tagged you in it. I hope it will give you some encouragement. You'll pull through, and come out the other end stronger and more successful for having gone through this test. I believe in you.