Depressing numbers

I ran some numbers today that I really wish I hadn't.

Not that it's anything I didn't already know. I calculated the amount of money I'm making now [($n/hour)x(40 hours/week)x(52 weeks/year)] and compared it to what I was making before I lost my job on February 27, 2007. This isn't the first time I've done this, but most of the time I've reduced the difference to an abstraction: a percentage difference, or a dollars per hour difference. Not a dollars per year difference.

In dollars per year, it's quite a staggering figure.

I should be proud of that in some perverse way. How many people can take a shot like that and still be standing? I've cut back - way back. But it's not enough. And the price of everything keeps going up. The cost of getting to work, especially. I'm not in dire straits, not yet. But it's coming. If something doesn't happen soon...

But on the other hand, I know I'm better off than a lot of other people. Fact is, I'm earning as much as or more than a lot of people where I work. And I know several people who are skilled but simply out of work. Two of them lost their jobs and are struggling with looking for work. The third nearly lost her life, and her hands, and her health, and her sanity. That she didn't is a testimony to who she is, and a clarion call for me to shut the hell up and do something about my own life already.

But it's not easy. This area...in order to get a better job, I would have to leave this area. Simple as that. And since I am committed to stay in this area for several reasons, I am stuck with the job opportunities that I have.

Unless something new comes along, some new company moves to the area. And who is going to make that happen? I have some thoughts on that topic, but they would best be left for another time.