Tuesday

So I see President Obama said yesterday that creating jobs was easy.  So easy that he failed to do it in two plus years.  Those shovel ready jobs that he joked were not quite as shovel ready as he thought. 

I am so glad that he thinks it is a joke.  He lives in the White House for free and I live in a car and hope that I have enough money to buy food towards the end of every month.  So funny.  So amusing. 

I don't blame presidents for the economic downturns.  They happen on regular basis.  That is just the way a free market works.  What I do tend to blame them for is how they interfere with them and how they talk about them.  The first President Bush can tell you that acting like people are not hurting is not a good strategy.  I don't remember that all that well, but I have heard other people who do talk about it.  People said he seemed out of touch to the struggles of everyday Americans. 

What is going on now is much worse because it has lasted so long.  We are getting close to four years now.  There are people who have lost two or three jobs during this time.  There are people who are working three or four part time jobs.  There are people who have had to move in with family.  And then there are people like me who are homeless because they don't have family that can help them.  We are going to have a "lost decade" as has been described as what happened in Japan. 

Not everyone is going to be able to survive a lost decade.  I know that I am lucky compared to many other homeless, but that doesn't make my situation any easier to deal with.  It doesn't make my back hurt any less from sleeping in a car.  It doesn't make cold soup taste any better.  It doesn't make the endless hours that you are trying to fill go by any faster.  Everyone looks at life from their own perspective.  There are always going to be people who are worse off than you, but that doesn't mean that you don't spend time thinking about the people who are better off than you.  It is human nature to think about yourself and the things you are dealing with.  At least from time to time.  You can hope that you can gather yourself and realize it could be worse.  But the moments will come that you are feeling trapped and unhappy with where you are in life. 

I see other homeless people all the time.  I am not sure if I am noticing them more now then before or not.  But it scares me.  The other day I had some guy asking me for money to get home on the bus.  He had been drinking and it wasn't even 11 am.  I see this woman every so often who seems to have a cleaning fetish.  She goes around cleaning businesses.  I am not sure if they pay her or not.  One night when I saw her it had to be 80 degrees and she had on her winter coat.  There is another man who I see every so often who must be schizophrenic.  He carries on full conversations with himself while he is looking at you.  I don't know if he is homeless or not, but he seems to have the same clothes on all the time, so I would think he is. 

How close am I to becoming them?  These people seem to live on the streets as a way of life and it doesn't look like much will change for them.