70.2025

I'm still processing and planning and trying to find rays of hope in the chaos.

This economy right now is the worst I've seen it, and my family went through the dot-com bust, I graduated into a recession, I've cycled through a few jobs since the pandemic that had to downsize a year after hiring me. There's really never been an economic "boom" in my lifetime. Maybe when I was a tiny child, but we were lower middle class, relying on my father's modest salary and the little bit my mother made doing in-home daycare.

After spending so long being tumbled around in unstable situations, you think I'd finally be a pretty polished gemstone, but instead I feel like I'm withering away to dust.

I need to be strong and take care of my family. I know I can be. I'm resilient. But it will be tough and the things I thought I could rely on are like loose stepping stones sliding away from me. I know I will qualify for unemployment, but how long would I be unemployed?

I put on a brave face but I'm scared. This job market is worse than even in 2008, where I was at least lucky to find reliable temp jobs that turned into something else. I could also live much more cheaply, since the act of breathing didn't cost as much as it does now. I was younger and had fewer worries. I didn't have anyone else relying on me.

Now I am older, and I am feeling older. I am not "old." But I am not "young." I'm tired of running the hamster wheel of jobs and want to figure out a career. But I also know my ADHD severely prevents me from just sticking to one thing. Which is why I like my "jack of all trades" roles in the smaller companies I've worked for. But smaller companies struggle in dire economic circumstances. And thus we return to the problem at hand.

I'll get through this. I always have. But for the first time in my adult life, despite all the setbacks my family has endured before, this future worries me like it has never before. Please, good people who can stop the insanity, I need you to be the adult in the room now.