Tag Archives: economy

Saturday Afternoon Ramblings

October 20, 2012 D.A. Adams 5 Comments

Here’s why I find myself growing angry and bitter. By the terms of my divorce, based on Tennessee law, my child support is based on a ratio between my income and solely the mother’s, and the time we each have the boys. Because she doesn’t work, I’m required to pay roughly 30% of my take home income, regardless of what her household income is. Financially, that’s crippling and affects my ability to spend time with my sons. Furthermore, I have no oversight on how that money is spent. None. In addition to that, I get no tax break on that money. My taxes are based on gross income, so some years I actually owe money at the end of the year, despite living well below the poverty line.

If I don’t pay child support, I can face jail time for contempt of court. If I don’t pay it, even though I have no way of ensuring that money is spent on my children, I’m labeled a deadbeat dad, not just by the law but also by society. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with supporting my children. I would do anything for them. What I have a problem with is the imbalance of the laws that have crippled me financially for at least twelve more years, offer me no safeguards that the money is used for its intended purpose, and in effect enslave me to that obligation, regardless of whether or not she actually needs the money.

So I work, pay the money, and scrape by on what’s left.

My profession is education. Aside from writing, that’s what I’m best at doing. Today, because our society so undervalues education, during the school year, I work 60-70 hours a week. Last night, I graded until 8:00 PM, on Friday night. I woke up this morning and spent three more hours grading, recording, and uploading files. As soon as I finish this post, I’ll spend at least five to six more hours doing the same. Tomorrow, I’ll spend all day grading. From mid-August to mid-December, I get maybe three or four full days off. Anyone who has ever taught can attest that being in the classroom teaching is exhausting work in and of itself. I’ve worked other jobs and have often said that one hour in class equates to about two hours at another job. During the school year, I and every other teacher I know live in a constant state of exhaustion.

Because I have to work so many long hours with so little time off, I have no time or energy left over for loved ones. Just talking to my children for an hour four nights a week is taxing. Forget about date nights (not that I have any money for one) or spending quality time with friends and family. Forget about writing or doing the things I need to do for the farm. By the time I accomplish everything I have to do for school, I’m utterly spent, and it’s Monday morning and time to start over again. Forget about promoting my books the way I need to. Forget about nurturing a relationship. Forget about having any kind of a normal life.

I’ve had well-intending people tell me to find another profession, as if the answer is so simple. I’m trained to teach and write. I’ve yet to find an employer out there that values my skills or equates them to their needs. Not that there are any decent jobs out there right now. I feel trapped by circumstances with no foreseeable end to the cycle. I’ve all but lost hope on my books ever being “successful” financially. I’ve all but lost hope on ever getting the farm off the ground, even though I’ve proven my hydro design works. I simply don’t have the funds to make it happen.

So each day, I feel a little more bitter, a little more angry. I feel like our system has failed me at each and every turn. I’m trying desperately to find something to give me a glimmer of hope, a flicker of optimism that somehow things will get better, but each day I feel more trapped, more alone, more forsaken, more disenfranchised. That’s my reality. That’s where I am right now.

General Posts

Wednesday Afternoon Ramblings

September 19, 2012 D.A. Adams Leave a comment

I’ve stayed out of politics, mostly because I believe it’s become a shell game of mass distraction, but the comments about the 47% from you, Mitt Romney, struck a raw nerve with me. You want to say that I and people like me expect the government to take care of us. You say we see ourselves as victims. You imply we do not take responsibility for our own lives. Well, let me set you straight.

First and foremost, I wasn’t born the son of a governor with insider connections. My father is a working man who, until he became disabled, held two and three jobs for most of my life. He taught me the value of a dollar, the pride of honest labor, and respect for others. He pushed me to get an education and make something of myself. He taught me the importance of persistence and the necessity of pursuing dreams for finding inner contentment. From the actions of your life and the rhetoric of your campaign, I can see your father didn’t teach you these same values, and for that, I’m deeply saddened for you.

You see, your warped perception that wealth is the measure of a person’s worth is simply wrong. Yes, you’ve made a pile of money buying and dismantling companies, then shipping those jobs overseas. I’m certain you are quite proud of yourself for all the money you’ve “earned” by doing so. What you fail to see, what you and your crony capitalist pals fail to grasp, is that you are not following the rules of the free market. These rules are not enforced by any government; they are not arbitrary; they are not negotiable. Eventually, markets correct. When you manipulate a market, as in moving a manufacturing company to a country that subsidizes labor, thereby undercutting the wages of your own consumers, eventually your own market will implode. The invisible hand may move slowly, but it does move. One day, you will wake up to find that you can no longer manipulate the market to your benefit.

When that day comes, and I acknowledge that it may or may not occur in your lifetime, you or your children will find that the working class people you so cynically mock as lazy and shiftless have something you and your family can never buy. We have a deeply-rooted sense of loyalty to our families, our friends, our communities. We know how to dig in our heels and fight harder because most of us have had to hold multiple jobs throughout our lives. We don’t need others to cook our meals, drive our cars, keep our schedules, or manage our money. We’ve had to juggle all of those aspects of our lives on our own because most of us can’t afford to pay someone else to do it for us. Most of the working people I’ve known, the vast majority, have a deep sense of pride in the jobs they do, no matter how low that job may seem to you.

I may not have as much money as you do, and in every facet of my life I may not measure up to your definition of greatness, but at the end of my life, I’ll be able to look back and say that I gave something to my community, my state, and my country. Teaching English may not be a glamorous job or lucrative or fun, but I know I’ve enriched other people’s lives. You, sir, cannot say the same. Your career, both in the private and public sectors, has been about destroying other people, either by dismantling their business or selling their job overseas. All of your wealth, all of your power, all of your entitlements are selfish, empty vessels. I pity your perverted sense of right and wrong.

Before you speak of working class people again, perhaps you should live for a time in our shoes. One week should suffice. One week of worry about buying groceries or paying the electric bill would teach you a valuable lesson you’ve never experienced. One week of ironing your own clothes, buying your own groceries, running your own errands, and toiling for a boss who undervalues your contribution to their organization would do wonders for your outlook on life and family and labor. Your distorted concepts of working people, men and women who get out of bed each and every morning and work themselves into an early grave for substandard wages just to fulfill obligations to their children and families, is disturbingly arrogant and self-centered. Your ignorance of humanity is alarming. For an educated man, you are shockingly stupid.

You are correct about one thing. I will not be voting for you, but not for the reasons you believe. It’s not that I want the government to take care of me. It’s that I cannot and will not offer support to a human being who looks upon the working class with such disdain and contempt. Hopefully, enough of my fellow working class people will see that as well, and you will lose the election, becoming all you deserve to be, an insignificant footnote to history.

General Posts

Thursday Afternoon Ramblings

August 30, 2012 D.A. Adams 4 Comments

Before the separation anxiety created by losing my children, I had never really known anxiety before. Sure, I’d gotten nervous in certain situations, but I’d never experienced the unexplained waves of fear that appeared out of nowhere and made me edgy. For the first year after the boys were gone, excluding the times when they were back with me, I lived in a constant state of panic, worried about whether or not they were safe and healthy and happy. My stomach constantly burned from this fear, and I often awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, trembling. As I adjusted to my new reality, the anxiety waned, and ever so slowly, I began to feel “normal” again.

Recently, the anxiety has returned. This time, however, it’s not about my children, even though the sensation is much the same. I can’t say exactly why I feel this way, but for a few weeks now, I’ve not been able to shake it. There’s no one specific thing I’m worried about, more like a thousand little uncertainties that gnaw at me. From the erratic weather to the political sideshow to the sluggish economy, I feel like we’re heading for something bad in the next few months. While I can’t point to any quantifiable thing and say, “Here’s definitive proof,” I just have an overwhelming intuition that the proverbial dung is about to hit the fan.

I don’t believe in the Mayan calendar and don’t expect the world is about to fly apart, but I do feel like our nation, because of the internal strife and chasms we’ve created through our sensationalist parodies of debate and deliberation, is on the verge of a deep, fundamental shift. I can’t say for certain what that shift will be, perhaps martial law, perhaps financial collapse, perhaps civil war. I don’t know. I just know we cannot continue unraveling at the seams the way we have for the last few years. And again, I can’t point to any one thing, just a feeling I get from people I encounter who either give off vibes of being frazzled and panicked or seem like mindless drones on auto-pilot.

I hope I’m wrong. I want to feel positive and optimistic about the world and the future. I much prefer feeling positive energy, but right now, there simply isn’t much to feel good about. Everywhere I look, things are just out of balance and eroding into an uncivilized frenzy of self-interest. People are either mad as hell at those who disagree with them politically, distracted by TV, or apathetic to everything. Few people seem even content with their lives, and I don’t know anyone who feels positive about the direction we’re headed as a society. I wish I could look at the future and feel hopeful about it, but right now, tomorrow just looms bleak and ominous as we trudge onward.

I’m sorry for writing such a negative piece, but this is how I feel about our country right now. I can’t pretend like everything is okay when in my gut I have this feeling that something awful is about to happen.