Don't Panic II

I don’t know how married people do it – right now I can’t even broach difficult topics with my betrothed without her shutting down on me, and then at first opportunity, leaving the house “for a bit.”

At issue is a really tough topic, and one that really underscores her anxiety, which is unmedicated, and really troubling for her, and by extension, for me. It’s employment, or the lack thereof. My love is a teacher, or rather, she should be – it’s what she wants to do with her life. She has a master’s in elementary education. But right now she is temp-jobbing as an administrative person.

In this economy, there’s no shame in that. For most people. But she’s also had jobs as a tutor in area schools, and the experience has made her gun-shy – our schools are rough. Really, I think schools everywhere are rough, and she’s got a rosy, unrealistic view of what to expect from teaching.

Anyhow, when she moved down here we kept talking about how we would be DINKs – Dual Income, No Kids. It’s a great way to set aside money and get ahead. But she hasn’t found a teaching job full-time.

If it were purely economy-related, I’d be a lot more understanding, but let’s be clear here – I have been more than fair, and I continue to be. I pay the mortgage, the utilities, even her cell phone bill. I find money to cover her unanticipated debts. I co-signed on her car loan. I buy all the groceries, pay for all the entertainment, even buy gas fer her car when I can. And I don’t mind it – I really don’t. I love her and I just want her to get her feet under her and TRY. I know that she’ll succeed with some persistence and effort, and that’ll be it – no looking back.

But she just doesn’t. Most of the time I just let is slip away between us, and just be with her. I love her and I love to be with her. I don’t want to push her away or to lose her. I don’t want to build anything between us that is bad or unhappy.

But we were walking today and I said something about “when we’re DINKs” like we always used to talk, and she said she didn’t think we would ever be DINKs in the town where we live.

That made me really anxious, and I pushed the issue. The reality is that I am underwater on my home, so to move away is to incur MORE debts – after paying a Realtor, I’d have to pay money, and walk away from any hope of recouping more than 30k in equity.. I started a new job a month ago after being unemployed for three months (laid off), and I’m *just* getting to the plus side, where there is money enough to eat out or to maybe travel. And I’m in training, to get real-world skills that will translate into real-world job market viability for the future. I can’t walk away from it.

I know she wants me to. I know she wants to move close to her parents and to love in the town she loves most. She’s not accepting reality. She’s not accepting responsibility for her own well-being.

And that’s the real elephant in the room – irresponsibility. You can’t talk to her about it because she’s so anxious she shuts down if you call her out on the slightest fault. But she’s not trying to make her life better – she’s sitting and waiting for her life to be made better for her, and I can’t do it alone. She has to try. She says she can’t find a teaching job, but she didn’t really try. She drove around and cherry-picked maybe a half-dozen schools and met the principals, true. But she didn’t complete the application process, didn’t even really get to the point where she had a full understanding of it. She “applied online” and as far as I know, made no effort for weeks to follow up – until the week prior to school. And then she was upset when the jobs were filled.

I could let that go – I really could. I really do love her and want only good things for her. I don’t want to fight or be nasty to her.

But I protested when she said we wouldn’t be DINKs on this town, and she shut down on me – she doesn’t know how to get any other kind of job. I’d even have let THAT go if she hadn’t let her goddamn motherfucking teaching certificate EXPIRE. Now, she can’t even walk into a teaching job, and she still is holding out for her career dream like it’s almost here – like it’s just one phone call away. On top of that, she’s made zero traction in getting it renewed. As far as I can tell, it’s a week-long community college course, and that’s it. But she’s not sure about that. She needs to reach out to the state where she got her teaching certificate to be sure. Even though we can’t leave here. Even though the state we are in has reciprocity with the state where she get her certificate.

The place where she has her temp job offered her a full-time job, with benefits. She turned it down. She wants to be a teacher. Just not here, based on her tutoring experience in the two roughest schools in the area. Even though we can’t afford to leave. Even though she let the most basic requirement for a teacher (which she had) expire.

And I CANNOT talk to her about any of this. As soon as I do, she shuts down and it becomes adversarial.

If I made more, I’d support her outright, and happily, and that would be that. And I WILL make more, and I WILL be able to do that, still happily. But we’ll still be HERE, and that won’t be good enough.

All this erupted over a Beetle – a shiny blue VW Beetle that made me daydream about owning a new car again. Because it is a daydream. Until she owns her future and takes some responsibility for her own momentum, we’re stuck. And to tell her that only makes it worse.

Whee.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/19/tech/innovation/top-tech-trends-2012/index.html

1. Touch computing – He asserts that these can be computing replacements – I disagree.  Tablets are great for consuming media, but not for generating it.  Ever type extensively on an iPad?  It hurts.  I think that a dedicated input interface (keyboard, mouse, trackpad) will continue to set computers apart from tablets.  Also, smudges.  It works well for some things, but as a replacement?  I don’t agree.

2.  Social Genstures – this will be a big thing with a certain segment, but for mainstream America, I think it’s an intrusion on your privacy.  I use Spotify and I’m ok with people seeing the music I listen to.  I also use the WSJ Reader app on facebook and it really creeped me out that it published what I read.  But you have to allow it to do that in order to use it.  I get what the motivation is – they want more folks to put eyes on the WSJ and raise ad revenues.  But the things I read are more sensitive to me than the music I listen to.  I already know that I like the music I listen to, and i’m happy to discuss it.  That’s not the case with news – I am forming opinions with what I read, and until I have them formed, I am loath to debate anyone.  I like to be prepared, and having someone pipe up at me about something I’ve read one thin article about is something I don’t want.

3.  NFC and mobile payments – I agree.  NFC is the next wave of marketing, and I wish I had a good business plan for implementing it.  Mobile payments too – as well as the pitfalls of getting spammed at the counter and having your wallet hacked.  But it’s coming, and it’ll be really cool until someone figures out how to make it creepy and/or annoying.

4.  An iPad competitor - Tablets are becoming ubiquitous and mainstream, but that’s not the whole story.  The author, who appears to be the CEO of Mashable and therefore a pretty reasonable source for this, expects the Kindle Fire to outsell the iPad, based purely on cost.  That may be true, but how many of them will be returned when they don’t prove to be as sweet as they seem like they might be.  The iPad is the standard, and it’s a bargain at the $499 price point.  The Kindle Fire, at $199, quite simply has to be lacking something.  I do think we’ll see a lot of tablets, and we’ll continue to see the divergent Android ROMs going all over the map.  I like Apple’s model – they control the OS and QC the apps.  Android might be a lot more hackable, but for most folks, that’s not a good thing.  I don’t think Apple needs to worry much in 2012.

5.  TV everywhere?  Maybe.  Netflix, Blockbuster, Hulu, Vudu, etc, do a lot to unhook your media consumption from the networks and cable companies, just as Tivo unhooked you from a scheduled TV event.  But until the TV companies can figure out how to get revenue from this model, it won’t really take off.  Product placement can only go so far.  I think we’ll wind up with a model that aligns well with David Foster Wallace’s Teleputer from Infinite Jest - where you subscribe to shows, probably for a nominal fee, and then they are released to your computer/device for consumption right around the time they air.  It allows you to time-shift your viewing, the companies to get revenue (from your subscription fees), and for you to get first-quality media in whatever format you want.  But it won’t happen in 2012.  This is a big tech investment, and our economy is in the shitter.  Look to Japan to do this first.

6.  Spatial Gestures – it’s neat, but it’s not mainstream.  We might see some hobbyist-level developments and some niche products.

9. Flexible screens – cool idea, but I’ve yet to see one in person, and I bet they’re not as flexible as we need them to be.  I need to be able to accidentally sit on mine.  and have it not break or get some kind of permanent crease.  I want this to be real, but if it’s not cotton-cloth-flexible, I’m not buying one.

10.  HTML5 – meh.  There’s a lot of content out there already, and no one is going to set about making it all backwards compatible.  We’ll see more of this. but it won’t be the default for many years.

But then, I’m the CEO of jack-squat.

I had crafted a partial post back on the 8th of November, that started with “I think I might get fired.”

On the 10th, I lost my job, due to “position elimination.”  Due to several clauses in my separation agreement, I cannot comment too much about it. other than it was a no-fault separation on paper, but really, I lost my job for reasons outside my control.

It’s arguable that the company was scrambling, as many companies are, to find a business model that works.  The old one was pretty broken, in my opinion, through no fault of anyone I worked with or for.  Still, a change was much needed.  I am very glad to not work for them anymore, although I wish them every success.

So.  It sucks to be right.  My unemployment kicked in today, after more than a month, and it’s paltry.  Measly.  But then again, it’s free money, and it’s not supposed to be some kind of inheritance – it’s money to keep the lights on, and gas in the tank, and food on the table.

Unfortunately, I was part of the housing boom, and I bought more house than I could afford at the time.  My lender told me the truth-at-the-time, which was that almost everyone getting loans just refinances and takes money out and uses that money to increase the value of the home, making it more valuable for the refi next time, to take more money out again.  Well, that all stopped.  He also told me that I’d only make more money – my income would increase every year and the mortgage payments would not.  Well, that’s not true either.  I never made a dime more than I did when I bought the house, and my mortgage payments DID increase – as property taxes went up.  That $1000 became $1200, and that additional $2400 a year did not magically appear with it.

So the house is going up for sale, and lots of stuff has to go into storage.

The fiancee is still massively underemployed, and accidentally let her primary certification for her job lapse.  I don’t blame her – it costs money, and we don’t have any, even if she had been on the ball about it.  But now we need to come up with that money to enable her to even look in her field.  Everything, it would seem, costs money.

So my income, basically, on unemployment, is half of what it was.  Half.  I have no savings, no safety net, except a 401k which I’ll lose a third of if I take it out.  I had no margin at all before I lost my job.  My insurance will cost me over $200 a month, and I don’t know where that money will come from.  My beloved Volkswagen is aging, but hanging in there (go Turbo Ducky, go!).  I have a dog, and a cat.

But it’s this house, with every utility magically topping $100 (ok, not water) that’s killing me, so I’m selling it.  To do that, we have to put stuff in storage –  a LOT of stuff.  Guess what storage costs?  Yep, $100 a month.  So that makes a grand total of $350 a month that I couldn’t afford before I lost my position, that I now have to accommodate on half of what I was making.

Is this fun?  Is it sick that it’s kind of exciting?  I mean, I’ve never really faced this kind of adversity, and I am kind of looking forward to it.  I don’t know what will happen; I really don’t.  I’m a smart and capable and qualified IT professional, and I’m looking avidly for gainful employment, but the trick is, I really can’t accept some positions.  I can’t, for example, make less than I was.  And I have to do it quickly.

We’ve cut back on everything we can – we have no TV services except an antenna in the attic.  We’ve cut the heat back to sweater-and-snuggle temps.  I’m weather-proofing everything I can think of, and driving only when I need to.  We eat nothing luxurious at all – our luxury is a once or twice a month trip to either the Chinese place or the diner.  $16 plus tip, and we eat the Chinese for three days.

Yep.  When you’re right, you’re right.  And often enough, that sucks.

I am a Redditor.  Not a great one, or even a significant one.  I get bogged down reading comics and funny pics and gifs and reading about upcoming games.  I don’t post often – just a few here and there, and I’ve even gotten shouted down to the point where I lost my will to face the masses.  Now I lurk.  I drop snark.

Today I read a post: this post.  Right now in America there are protests, growing and spreading, all over the USA.  Occupy Wall Street.  Occupy wherever.  And the poster is 19 years old, and fired up.  I personally think he gets a little conspiracy-y, but then, he probably thinks I’m The Man, so that’s fair on both sides.  I do agree that the country is, in some fundamental way, a little bit broken.  I do not believe the conspiracy theories.

Why not?  Because I believe in something I call multiplex causality.  I don’t believe that any one thing is the root of this problem – it is systemic, but that’s nothing new.  Wall Street is, arguably, the center of wealth in this country, and we all profited from the heyday of Wall Street – we have enjoyed a standard of living that more than half of the world simply would not comprehend, it is so luxurious and privileged.

And there are things wrong – gas prices are going up.  Wall Street?  Maybe.  Maybe Egypt’s fault.  Maybe Saudi Arabia’s.  Maybe we’re just running out.  Health care is going up – Wall Street’s fault?  Maybe – they push for new innovations in care to justify high stock prices, and it takes a long time for these new treatments to drop in price.  Torts don’t help at all, with our culture’s desperate love of dollars and the shortest way to the most of them.  We’ve seen the lavishness we could have if only we could afford it.  And we think to ourselves – I’d like that, but I’d put my own special spin on it.  If people saw my crib, they’d REALLY get jealous.

Wall Street may have made the money we all want so badly, but it didn’t make us want it.  The media did – so does the media really feel control from Wall Street?  Certainly advertising plays a role in the success and failure of a media venture.  Dollars again.  But the subject material really drives the process – a show has good material, gets lots of eyes on it, and rich people pay more to show all of those eyes their products, in hopes that many of those eyes buy them, and the products make them rich.

My feeling is you can’t blame it all on money alone.  Something made us want money – envy, greed, horniness.  Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy comfort.  It can buy luxury.  Comfort and luxury are a good first step towards happiness.

Personally, I’m struggling financially.  I’m not proud of it.  I’m not a frivolous spender, but my fiancée has not been able to find work in her field; the weight of that falls on me as often as not.  Or her parents.  Or mine.  We take what is offered with a degree of shame and a fervent hope that it’s the last time, but it hasn’t been the last time.  Sometimes we have to go and ask.

It’s partly my fault – I took a lender’s advice and got the most house I could afford.  I took an interest-only mortgage.  I believed him when he said I would only make more money.  I still believe him in a way, even though the world has begun to disagree.  I took someone at their word – promising a cash infusion when I got my house.  It was offered as a grant, or a gift.  It arrived as a loan, at 7%.  And I still took it, and the burden that came with it.  I have made so many bad moves that I’m almost afraid to move at all.

You might be sitting there wondering just what the fuck any of this has to do with the OWS movement.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe a lot.  Because each of these issues has deep causes that go way beyond a central issue, and as such, no one problem is the root cause – it’s lot of problems working in concert.

You can’t tell me what ingredient in ice cream makes it so good.  You can say it’s the milk, but what if it’s the cream?  The sugar?  The flavoring?

I support the idea of a wholesale reform of our tax code.  I support some progressive social policies.  I support the existence of a welfare state.  But I don’t support a revolution.  We haven’t found a root cause of the ills of our society in Wall Street; we’ve found the most glaring example.  And we can’t fight if we don’t know who to fight.  And the reality is that there is no one enemy here – the enemy is ourselves, and who we allow ourselves to be.  You want a revolution?  BE a revolution.

I know a few people who use all caps in their e-communications.  Email, Facebook, and I really suspect MySpace.  I don’t know because my experience with MySpace lasted about 3 days.  I’m sure it’s a nice place once you get used to it.  Aside from the all caps.

My mechanic uses all caps.  He tunes engines like a champ, can restore your clunker to a showroom condition, and can turn your crappy car into a monstrous hybrid beast of a thing.  For example, last time I was there, he was converting an old school Mini Cooper (not the new ones) into a Honda V-TEC 180hp beast.  Oh, yes.  A turbo Honda V-TEC beast.  With a tilt-forward hood.  Because he could.   I think he uses all caps because he uses email much like a wrench – to get a job done.  He’s not trying to impress anyone with her typing, and this is a quick and dirty way to skirt the rules of capitalization.  All it really serves to do for me is call him on the phone rather than email him.  It may well be this was his plan all along.

I have a co-worker who uses all caps in her appointments, email headers, etc.  She used to send out her emails in all caps, until I finally took her aside and told her – all caps is yelling.  She was yelling everything she had to say, and just like real life, that gets old quick.  Her, I don’t know why she defaults to all caps.  I do know that I considered disabling caps lock on a few shared computers due to her habits, but ultimately, I thought that would be a little unprofessional.  No need to fight unprofessional with unprofessional.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LET THINGS GO.  IT’S NOT THAT BIG A DEAL, RIGHT?  IT’S NOT THAT ANNOYING – I JUST MAKE IT OUT TO BE WORSE THAN IT IS, RIGHT?  I MEAN, THIS ISN’T THAT DIFFERENT – THE WORDS ARE THE SAME NO MATTER WHAT SENTENCE CASE I USE OR FAIL TO USE.  RIGHT?

Well, not exactly.  Chrome’s spellcheck totally ignored all of the words in all caps, so I had to go through and manually correct spelling errors.  But then, if you don’t care about sentence case, does spelling matter to you?

This Gizmodo journalist/blogger/whatever – her name is Alyssa Bereznak – wrote this article (link) about her OKCupid experience.  Your tl;dr is that she seems to look down on just about everything about the experience, including the guy.

That should really end it, but it also should be a two line blog entry or a tweet – but instead it’s a Gizmodo article – do people on Gizmodo get paid?

She met a guy, and he has a geeky habit – he plays Magic; the Gathering.  It IS geeky – I know a lot of people who play it,and the rules and details and esoteria – all right up your average geek’s alley.  Additionally, it’s hard to be good at it – you have to devote a lot of time, thought, practice, and money to it to get a good deck going and to really get good.  I’ve played it before, as well as a few other games like it, notable Vampires: The Eternal Struggle.  I gotta tell you – ultimately, it did not hold my attention./  Maybe that’s because I was not as good at it as those friends I have who play it, and as such, I was quickly eliminated, defeated, sent to Torpor, what have you.  I admit it – I prefer to do things that I succeed at.

Anyhow, she met this geeky guy, and she thought he was not unattractive, not unappealing, until it came out that not only did he play this game, but that he was, in fact, an elite, champion player. He was the kind of guy who has won money playing it (according to his wikipedia page, over $300K).

Anyhow, when she googled him, suddenly he became a member of the untouchable caste.

My initial reaction was to feel bad for the guy.  But after some followup googling of my own, I don’t feel sorry for him at all – he does something he really likes, and he does it really really well.  There’s no cause for pity there.  As for the rejection – this is an admittedly geeky guy who has put himself out there on the market, seeking love and fulfillment.  Is there cause for judgment there?  Nope.  Rejection is part of it – you won’t appeal to everyone.  You just won’t.  Sometimes the reasons are obvious and mutual, and sometimes they aren’t.

But you know what?  I think I might pity Miss Bereznak.

You see, I really appreciate people who are who they are.  It’s really a lot harder than it seems for most of us.  It’s challenging to be a staunch liberal in the Bible Belt – you start to hold your tongue from time to time.  It’s hard to be a fan of science fiction when your fiancee teases you about the makeup, characters, plot lines, even the theme music (OK, that one can be valid).   But some people find this easier than others.

I have some geeky friends.  Friends who LARP.  Friends who play video games a lot.  Friends who are sneaker-heads.  Friends who have these hobbies that they love, and communities they are a part of as a result.  And I think it’s awesome.

This Miss Bereznak doesn’t seem to have any of that same confidence about who she is.  She signs up for OKCupid, and frames it as an admission – but I think it’s nothing to be ashamed of – lots and lots of people try to find love online.  Some succeed.  Others don’t.  Then she decries all of the people on there are lonely geeks or creepy.  From what?  Ten bucks says it’s a combination of photos and profile elements.  Are they lonely?  Of course.  They’re on a dating site, trying to meet a significant other.  Are they geeks?  Maybe.  Lots of us are.

But if this is your attitude towards a dating site, for goodness sake, just spare us all and don’t sign up.  You know why this fellow didn’t outright mention MTG in his profile?  Because people like her would judge him.  That’s the real downside of the online thing: you only give and get a very narrow impression of a person, and who they are and are not is only going to be revealed in person, over time.  The wrong word, sentence, phrasing, even a typo – can lead to a snap rejection.

I’m very lucky to be in a great relationship with someone who gets me, knows I try to be who I am, and supports me regardless.  Very lucky.  Because I’ve been that guy with the profile who wonders if he should edit things out, and frets over what pictures to post, and wonders why his inbox is empty.  It’s a hard place to be, emotionally.  And women like this – they make it that much harder.

I could speculate about why she feels this way, but I think I won’t – that’s no better than her judging this Finkel fellow for his hobbies.  But I hope she learns to like herself according to a standard she sets for herself.  I bet she’ll find a lot more happiness.

We ought to run off to the city.

Baby, we ain’t missing a thing.