I'm Starting To See Why They Killed Themselves During The Great Depression...

Not that I'm planning on doing that or anything... but I can understand their frustration.

Some days you can wake up with no money in your pocket and be thankful that there's nobody in the hospital, you have food in the pantry, freezer, and refrigerator, and that you're alive. Other days you wake up with total frustration over the emergency room bills from last year that you have no clue how you are ever going to come up with even money to make payments on them, the mortgage that's 20 days late and you can't pay until the federal income tax return comes back, the unemployment people that say that there's a problem with your application and are always busy no matter what time of day you call them, three job losses in the last year, two months of unemployment and no prospects in site, and five years of barely being able to afford to pay the bills because even when dh has a job, it's usually not enough to pay for luxuries like new clothes or trips to McDonald's.

The last 4 jobs my husband has had (if you don't count the emergency job at GoDaddy last year because we needed money and dh couldn't find a job and it was better than nothing) was working as an executive assistant. As in, assisting CEOs of small companies, department heads, etc. When he was employed in those jobs, money was decent. Not great, but we could pay our bills and have a little left over. We were even planning on going to Disneyland and putting dd into gymnastics classes. His first executive assistant jobs that he took were 12 years ago.

Before that, he had jobs as an Administrative Assistant. That's the step down from the Executive Assistant. It's a perfectly great job if you're 22. It's not a great job if you've been working as an Executive Assistant for 12 years.

My husband just said earlier today that he's going to start applying for Administrative Assistant Job. Might as well start applying for jobs where you wear a hat and say "Do you want fries with that?" as well. It's a good thing that they raised the minimum wage.

It's just frustrating. Last year, every time dh would lose a job, it would only take about 2 or 3 weeks to get another one. This time, it's already been 2 months, and I'm starting to feel that we'll be lucky if he has a job again in another 3 months. And Ben Bernanke says that there's no recession. Well, maybe the economy doesn't meet the technical definition of a recession, where there is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product for two successive quarters (6 months), but I'm not seeing any signs of things going great around here.

I was talking to my mom yesterday, and she says that a friend of hers has a daughter that works for Macy's, and they let go of an entire marketing department there. So evidently things aren't going well in Seattle either. I talk to people on the internet all the time that can hardly make ends meet. Yes, things in the economy are just going along swimmingly...

I normally try to be positive but sometimes it's hard to be positive all the time. Yes, God has always swept in at the very last moment and provided us with the things that we need. He helped my mother-in-law find a brand new crib for just $15 at Wal-Mart, that doesn't happen every day. But sometimes you just wish for some semblance of... stability. A job... anything that will give you the impression that the next month's mortgage will be taken care of. Nowadays I suppose not even a job is going to give stability, but it's better than no job.

I guess this must be something like how the Israelites felt while they were wandering around in the wilderness. Yes, God provided them with food every day, but there was absolutely no stability there. What if I wake up one morning and God doesn't put the manna there? Similarly, I've been thinking What if dh can't find a job and we can't make the mortgage payment? The Israelites did not see a light at the end of the tunnel, and right now, neither do I.

But then again, David spent several years living in caves and forests while being chased by King Saul. Eventually Saul was killed and he became king and things weren't so bad (until he sinned with Bathsheba, then everything went downhill from there). The Israelites wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years, but after that they had the promised land and things were good. Even my parents... my dad used to work for my grandpa, but he barely paid enough to live. I remember we were always broke. One day my dad got mad at grandpa and quit... but when he got a job after that, it was a really good job and now they're doing pretty well.

I'm just waiting for the second, happy half of the story. Even the people that lived through the Great Depression, and then World War II, did pretty well in the 1950s. If they lived through it without jumping off a skyscraper in frustration.