Thursday

I have been reading about Andrew Breitbart dying.  He seems way too young to be dying of natural causes.  Strange.

I have had a decent week at work.  Not great, but considering how slow it has been I will take it.  But the rising gas prices are hurting people.  I don't get to see much television, but I read the newspapers on my days off and I keep reading they are expected to hit $5 soon.  I can't imagine people will be spending anything other than what is necessary once that happens.

I think I mentioned before I can pinpoint when things really started to go south for me is when the gas prices were very high several years ago.  It makes a big difference in the way people spend their money.  I also read that some jerk in the Obama administration said they don't care if the prices are high.  How nice for them with their good paying government jobs.  What about me and the millions of others like me?  I am sure that even more people will creep closer to the edge if they have to pay $5 for a gallon of gas.  Some of which will fall off.

I do hope that someone who does care about the prices gets elected this fall.  I have followed the candidates and I think that Romney has the best chance of winning.  At least he understands how businesses run.  Although he has no idea what it is like to be me.  But the others don't either.  Matter of fact unless you have been here you don't get it.  You make assumptions, but many of those assumptions are wrong.

I saw this man yesterday eating vegetables out of can cold.  He had a bunch of bags with him.  I doubt he has a place to call his own either.  He was neatly dressed and he didn't smell that I noticed.  People assume that they know what homelessness is.  Or at least they think they understand what type of people are homeless.  In some cases they are right.  The drunks, the drug addicts, the mentally ill are all part of the ranks, but they don't tell the whole story.

There is a place not to far from the drop in center that I mentioned awhile back that is kind of woodsy.  People live in tents there.  Some are what you think, but not all of them.  One man is disabled and unable to work.  He has been unable to get social security to approve his claim so he lives in a tent.  He spends his days at the center.  I don't know what he does at night.  I have never asked.  I don't really talk all that much to the people there.  I just go and pick up some food when I run out of supplies and am short on money.  I try not to take too much because I figure I can fend for myself better than many of the others.  A few others that I have met have jobs too.  They just got caught in a bad situation when bills they didn't expect hit and everything snowballed.  That is really how it happens.  A few bad things happen and the next thing you know you are out of money.  Your savings is gone, you have a limited or no income coming in and you lose control and it all falls apart.

Anyway, it isn't always what you think on the surface.  Don't make assumptions about someone else's life.  You don't always see what happens.  You only see what you want to see or what you are conditioned to believe.  There are these ladies who are (or were) homeless and they know how to knit.  They sit outside of a train station and try to sell what they knit.  Some people won't buy from them when they find out they are homeless.  Was the item all of sudden uglier or something?  I guess they thought they were addicts or something.  Maybe they are, I don't know.  But I do know that they are trying to survive in a world that looks the other way.

There are many people who know that I am homeless and have done nothing.  I am not saying that I expect anything.  Like I said I don't know their stories either.  I am just saying that they would rather act like I don't exist. They don't even want to speak to me.   I found something online that is interesting.  Read it if you are interested.  I have found from my own experience for these to be true for the most part.  Especially the part about the help for getting people out of homelessness to be very limited.