Thankful

     It's hard not to be bitter.  I'm stumbling into my Golden Years and the first-wave Boomers are busy screwing over the economy again.  They keep doing it.  They keep finding new ways to do it.

     There are things I want to do -- write, mess with old radios, woodworking projects, gardening, and so on -- but little time to do them.  I've got to keep on scuffling, keep on working for other people to bring in money while getting less and less meaningful human contact in the doing.

     Maybe that last is for the best.  Maybe it's better to be at arm's length from everyone, where their virtues usually shine more brightly than their flaws and the surfaces hint at depths that are rarely there.

     Maybe.  What is certain is that in terms of material goods, freedom from hunger, protection from the cold, the rain, the snow, brigands, bandits and brutes, I am better off than 99.9999% of the human race has ever been.  Wealth -- real wealth, three square meals a day, a warm bed, the ability to banish darkness at the flip of a switch and hear from people halfway across the world on a whim -- is not a zero-sum game: every year, more and more people have access to it.  Things would be even better if even more of them did, and faster; but we're getting there.  Progress is lumpy and uneven.  It continues nevertheless.

     So there's reason to be thankful.  I'm personally pessimistic at present, but zoom out and, well, it's been worse in the past and there's every reason to expect it will be better in the future.

     Short-term?  Maybe not so much.  Time will tell, as it always does.