I doubt any graduating high school senior has ever said, "I plan to be jobless and homeless by the time I'm 30." But sometimes--even with the best of plans--shit happens.
The current financial climate, and more specifically, today's antics by the Kansas Legislature with regard to the paycheck I was expecting to receive on Friday (for the only slightly more amusing version, see S's post), has me thinking about that tonight.
'Cause see, I had a plan. Graduate from law school, spend a few years getting a jump start on the ensuing debt and a career as a public defender, buy a house, have a kid, happily-ever-after, and so on. And while that plan is still pretty much on track, for the moment anyway, the illusion that I had control over it all has taken a huge beating this past month.
I can go to work everyday. I can be responsible and live more frugally and build up savings. I can do everything that I'm supposed to do. But the housing crisis? I have no control over that. Falling revenues leading to state budget shortfalls? I have no control over that. The Legislature capriciously deciding to not pay me for work that I have already completed? I have no control over that. There's just nothing I can do--it's all too big.
It's as if someone has taken my life plans and dreams and is dangling them over the edge of a cliff, just to tease me. And while I know (please-god-and-knock-on-wood) that this latest fiasco is just a political game of chicken...and I know that, due to the fact that we have been planning ahead, things will be OK for a little while even if our Republican state legislators make good on their threats...still, it just knocks the wind out of you to have someone else playing with your life in that way--particularly when they do it with such an obvious lack of concern about exactly what it is that they're screwing with.
It just makes me feel so small....
