slippin' and slidin'

The Dow fell 281 points today. I don't really know what it means but like fans that appear at the playoffs I am now watching it everyday just to see what will happen. I don't own any stocks. I don't have an IRA. Nor a retirement account. Up to very recently I felt a little bit like a loser that I was first a theater person, then a hippy, then a stay-at-home mom, then a business owner; spending years earning little or nothing. I never had accumulated the resources to save for the future. Even after I got an actual job there wasn't enough to do any significant saving.

Now it seems like that history wasn't all that bad. I have not lost years of my life working so that the super-wealthy can enjoy their benefit. I can't imagine how folks who have played by the rules and have lost already more than a third of their investment must feel.

But mercifully all of us alive today have ancestors, some still alive, who have lived through a depression. They have a wealth of knowledge and the benefit of experience to share with us. They know how to endure and come out the other side. We carry their genetic material. We carry their strength and endurance. LIke them, we will be fine.

I watch the Dow to see how things are going. And I buy seeds for the garden. I'm thinking that all that stuff I learned while I wasn't working might now prove really useful. In fact I'm confident that's true. Each of us has useful skills and some of us have youth and considerable upper body strength. So this year we will continue to combine the resources we have and find the way to ride this wave.

It's scary. But exciting things always are.