Month: April 2025

Could have so many meanings. Certainly the French one for “one” doesn’t really fit given my prolificness writing, but it’s what comes to mind as I’m fumbling around this Saturday.

So, what’s up?

Well, a lot of the past week has been spent trying to figure out my future; I’ll soon be Unemployed.

You know, I’ve stuck around in my current gig for a few years longer than I probably should have for myriad reasons. Am I ready to be finished working? Kinda. I’m tired, and my health has worsened with regards to the MS. At the same time, improvements in other aspects have really returned sorta-normal life to me. I’m not seeing the entry I wrote following doing something really mundane, getting my teeth cleaned, on a random weekend morning. and it being kind of unremarkable. I didn’t have to preplan for days ahead to go ahead and do this normal thing.

I should be enjoying this, but I’m not. At the same time, while I should enjoying my newfound normalcy, things were still really disrupted by the pandemic nonsense, reactions to Trump, etc.

So I’ve stayed put, dealt with being Unappreciated, and tried to do the best I could for the company that’s employed me for the past six years.

Late last week, I was informed that my services would not be needed after 9 May.

Hm. Okay.

Do I just go quietly, with my departure largely unnoticed? It’d make a ton of sense, but with some of what I’ve gleaned from my discombobulated employer, I guess I should take a peek.

Maybe what’s happened is unfair, but I thought it was the correct approach to take.

Salaries haven’t kept up with inflation, that’s for sure. I could probably find something that pays roughly what I’m earning now, full-telecommute guaranteed, outside government. My wife out-earns me now, and she’s really only been working professionally for a few years.

I could fret about it, but it seems like an unproductive use of my time. The unanswered question is whether I want to work for a couple more years or not.

I don’t know.

Lots of work, though a bit of a respite from the craziness that was last week.

Once again, though, I really find myself in a position by myself.

Obviously, there’s still been a ton about DOGE. Local news is particularly awful with the reporting. Cuts are happening. Let’s do an interest story about a govvie who’s seeing her gig cut after she’s been in the same job for thirty-five years. Um. Okay. Retire, maybe? Or, embrace freshness. (So says the guy who’s got tons of stuff from way before the start of this blog…) Or, hey even better, let’s get a union thug to tell us how bad any cuts are!

So many things need to be started fresh.

I was disrupted by a call about stringing antiquated stuff along, so I’ve kind of lost the bubble on what I was going to say.

So, other stuff…

Heard a long rant on how what Trump is doing with tariffs makes sense. Naturally, it rolled into the RON PAUL-style despair about Nixon and the gold standard.

You can have currencies that are based on other things. Look, perhaps, at the countries whose currencies are tied in part to things like other non-metallic assets. OPEC isn’t cutting production to keep the price of oil up. Not happening. And both the global energy and currencies were absolutely cripped by the bombing of NordStream.

Okay. The experts at the Libertarian Institute said that would surely happen. And it hasn’t.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that NordStream didn’t carry oil, and Natural Gas isn’t dollar-deliminated.

Yes, there was a minor shock, but people work around it. Just because something was true in 1991 doesn’t mean it’s still true today.

Things changeget better.

I did watch President Trump’s “liberation day” speech, and was struck by that he doesn’t understand that things progress, and you don’t need to do the same things the way they used to be done. The union bosses he had speak don’t understand that. If you needed a pipefitter in 1955, you need one today.

Except maybe you don’t. Maybe there’s a better way to do things. Much as I love the feeling of radiator heat, I wouldn’t build a new building with them on every wall.

Won’t someone think of the pipefitters who are out of work, and the people who would have built those radiators?

Um. Yeah. I have.

And that’s part of the reason I’m not upset to see them go.

I don’t like going to cars or cooking, but it fits here. Is it a problem that gap dwelling is something basically nobody knows how to do anymore?