Falling Behind, Catching Up

      I find it difficult to write these days, mostly due to politics and business.

     One one level, a lot of the GOP seems be adopting an apocalyptic "victory or ruin" approach to elections, and an increasingly authoritarian style when they do win.  This is not a viable long-term approach in a democratic republic -- or in any other kind of democracy.  It is one reason I have put off retirement; a fixed income is perilous if there are major disruptions.

     More immediately, my line of work is undergoing a series of consolidations and adjustments that mean more and more work is being done by fewer and fewer people, and to step out of the game of musical chairs at all means losing your place.  The big owners are more and more remote, the pay gap between the corporate bosses and the clock-punchers is getting larger and larger, and as far as they're concerned, "artificial intelligence" is probably going to make most of us redundant before too long anyway.  There's a lot of incentive to keep on getting while the getting is at least adequate, because tomorrow it may all go away.

     But all of this (and plenty more) is not at all conducive to calm reflection.  I'm running as fast as I can to stay caught up, knowing the music will stop and at that point, the question will be not if things are bad but how bad they are, and how quickly will they get worse.

     I was hoping to retire in more or less genteel poverty, under a largely stable national and local government, in a world that wasn't notably more screwed up than the one I grew up in (which had an ample supply of problems, many without clear solutions, but people were at least trying).  That's not what we've got and navigating the present makes me feel like a drunk on a highwire.