I don’t think its a huge secret that I have felt pretty stuck for a long time, like years. There is not a really clear reason why this is. Part of it is overwhelm, laziness, inertia, but a good part of it is external as well. When the pandemic happened, I was relatively emotionally prepared for the economic and political shocks (if I’m being honest, very little has happened in that area that I didn’t see coming) and I guess I figured it was going to be like an extended wintering, where I would just hole up, encourage my loved ones to do the same and ride it out. There was not a lot to do about anything. Whatever happened was going to happen and so much of our risk was determined by others around us, in the neighborhood, city, region, that you could only control what you could control. I think I managed my and my family’s risk relatively well and we did not lose anyone close to us, so OK, I guess.

I’m not gonna brag, but I also predicted the massive set of changes that are starting to kick in now. As we come out of the lock down period in America, many people are restless. For those who may have been out of work for a while, they are starting to find jobs and overall wages are starting to rise. Yes, this will bring on some measure of inflation, but that’s not a bad thing in and of itself and Janet Yellen can policy her way out of anything, so I really think this will be a net gain in the end. Small businesses may turn over. So too might large businesses, really. This is the cycle of life. Shit is not supposed to live forever (including corporations) and we should not be gearing our public policy toward propping up shitty business models. If companies do not pay their employees or offer benefits that fit the demographic, or if they have just asked for employees to sacrifice over and over again, there is gonna be a new day. Even without unions, employees have more say now than they ever have, and if they are willing to look, nearly everyone can find something better on the horizon. One company’s loss is another company’s gain.

I know many people who have romanticized their relationship with their employer. They stay out of some sense of loyalty, likely misplaced. A corporation cannot be loyal in return; you can almost always be fired with no notice and no reason. How quickly the tables have turned! One year ago, companies were taking government bailout money just to stay afloat (so they said, anyway). Now, they might not stay afloat anyway, simply because their employees don’t BELIEVE in the mission anymore. Salary is one thing, but inspiration is a whole different one.

There are also so many problems to be solved, on the smallest to the largest scales, and frankly, legacy companies have not been making the kind of progress needed to attack climate change and other issues. People will be leaving their jobs to start ventures with the sole purpose of actually solving our fucking problems rather than just building software to harvest more data from users to sell to advertisers to feed back to users to spend their money on SHIT they don’t need. This is not sustainable and it never has been.

At any rate, I feel things loosening, in the economy, in my circle and in myself. We are all becoming a little more unmoored and that’s not a bad thing. In fact, I think it is inevitable, 100% necessary, overdue by quite a spell. The trick will be to move with the current, while maintaining your own spacetime. Move freely, but make progress in a direction. Now is the time. Go forth and be blessed.