I've been feeling bad about that loss ever since, especially recently when I rediscovered a photo of us comparing rings (I'd given her a turquoise one).
Today I was searching for another lost item, my checkbook (I seem good at losing things lately) when I reached into my briefcase and pulled out the ring! It has been with me all along, I just didn't know it. Who knows why these things happen so randomly as they do, but today felt like a very good day to find something, as opposed to losing something more.
I eventually found my checkbook and closed out the year 2010 financially. Yuck. Ugh. I will spare you the details but we only brought in three dollars for every four that went out from Hotweir Central, and that is not a sustainable game plan.
In the early afternoon, I was again embracing my three young children, just back from a holiday at Sanibel Island, one of my favorite places on the planet. Immediately, I felt more alive when they were again with me.
This financial adjustment that is hitting "middle-class" America is a very serious problem. People my age, forced like me to burn retirement savings just to pay monthly bills, face some huge questions about what will happen to us when we grow old and retire.
How can we afford to support ourselves, if the present crisis continues? I know I am more fortunate than many, in that I'm a "saver," as opposed to the type of person who lives on deficit-financing schemes. I don't have any credit card debt at the moment.
And I'm attached to the one part of our economy that remains somewhat vital -- IT. The problem is there is not necessarily much work for a "content" guy. In this way, millions of former journalists and writers are scratching out a living best they can, by teaching, or working for a nonprofit, or doing contract work.
None of this is sustainable, however, so the question is what America wants to do with all of its unemployed artists? There won't be some massive government program, because the politics of today won't allow it. This is not the 1930s.
The private market, where I prefer to work, is still antagonistic to paying for content work, although that may be changing. In line my a new optimism that I am demanding of myself early in this new year, I do sense a small comeback for content on the web and perhaps on mobile platforms as well.
As for the legacy media -- newspapers, magazines and book publishing -- don't hold your breath. So, like many others, I am perched precariously as 2011 gets underway, needing a few good breaks and badly needing nothing else to go wrong.
Having endured so many transitions, I'm familiar with the moods that sweep over a person looking for new work. The one who gave me the ring said, "Something will turn up, it always does."
She was talking about work, but given what turned up today -- the ring -- not to mention that beautiful winter flower blooming in my garden, I'll choose to interpret the signs as good news coming. Good times coming.
More things found than lost.
-30-
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