As a writer you are used to hard times. You do not question those hard times and think well easy times are on the way. You just accept the hard times as the way things are and deal accordingly. This allows you to navigate the very hard existence that is the writers lot and get on with the business at hand. After you accept the situation then you are empowered because you are not waiting anymore. This is the way it is. This is as good as it gets.
Our economy might be as good as it gets. If you turn off the crack cocaine of easy credit for the last twenty five years and accept we now live in a global economy with no lock down on markets, then you start to think well maybe this is really our economy Take away that rocket fuel of stimulus credit and the good ship prosperity does not seem so close anymore. It is a sobering thought.
We are waiting though. We are waiting to uncork the champagne when the good times return. We envision a starting gun going off or damn being opened or a tidal wave of pent up demand to sweep over the country and the good times will be back and we will all wipe our brow and say, wow, glad that's over. But what if the situation we are in right now is the real economy? If you take away the artificial stimulus of money for nothing and accept we must compete in world markets, then maybe this is what our revved down economy feels like. Not a Mustang, but maybe a slow steady Buick.
This would mean millions of people are waiting for nothing. Millions of people are not taking bad jobs or menial jobs on the bet that the good ship prosperity is just over the horizon. I know twenty somethings who have come out of stellar Universities who have been out of work for years. They are waiting for their anointed jobs to return. But maybe the straight commission job of the insurance salesman, the door to door salesman, the Amway salesman, the copier salesman, the telemarketer, the fry cook, the MacDonald's position, the cable technician...maybe these are the real jobs of our economy and we better start going after them. Maybe, this is as good as it gets.
Bestselling author William Hazelgrove is the Hemingway writer in residence for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. He has written four novels, reviews and features for USA TODAY and been the subject of stories in the NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and NPR'S All Things Considered. His forthcoming novel is Rocket Man. More information can be gathered at www.billhazelgrove.com
