Strange Days
It’s weird times — lots of people losing jobs. And it’s just…weird. I went through the dot-com bubble, so this isn’t a new experience. The oddity for me lies in the fact that I am relatively secure — a contractor, a workload twice what it was last year, and a low level of replaceability. So I see all these people getting the axe, and I get this thing like survivor’s guilt. Like I should feel bad that I still have a job that pays awesomely and that I know I can make rent.
I’m also in a position where I’m grateful that I didn’t hang my ass in the wind and open the bike shop this year. I know, I know — bike sales were up huge last year. But that was when gas cost like $4000 a gallon, and now that consumer confidence is down and gas prices with them, I cannot see those numbers being maintained.
Strange, though, that I can already see the light at the end of the tunnel. Just like the fallout of the Dot-Com Bubble caused smart groups of people to glom together and start a new evolutionary path (Web 2.0), the fallout through all industries will do the same. In another few years, we’re going to see huge changes in automotive, retail, finance, and so on. A bursting bubble causes its victims to rethink their plans.
The first bubble got me to rethink mine — that’s where the bike shop idea came from. The second bubble is causing me to refine my goals and really think deeply about what I’m doing.
I suspect we’re a year or two away from coming out of this, but I think we’ll be in better shape once we’re on-track again.
What’re your plans for coming through the down economy?
My plan to get through? Deep slow breaths and hold on. So DAMN glad I got into a stable industry when I got laid off from my old job; so long as there’s any economy at all, folks will need food taken to stores. I can completely understand the ‘survivor guilt’ thing, too; I’ve got so many friends in desperate financial straits.