Ah! Even less change in a quarter!

Actually, there are quite a few things that change in a quarter. There are also a lot of things that change forever. That's what this thought is about.

We used to be in an ecomony where manufacturing was the determining factor for our status. If the factories did well, so did we, and we were fat, dumb and happy as long as there were a lot of jobs that paid well for doing what can only be considered mundane tasks.

Fast-forward to today. Manufacturing is a blip on the screen when compared to IT. Now, the hope is that IT jobs will pay enough to be considered good and to keep the economy going. They do, but there are some fundamental things that we need to look at in order to have fulfilling lives.

The old wisdom was that a sign of your steady job was that yo uhad a house, a couple of cars, a bass boat, a cabin, etc. The longer you worked, the closer you got to your 35 and out (for those of you who came up in non-GM or, I assume, non-Ford and non-Chrysler, households, after 35 years of working in the factory, you could retire with full benefits), the better off you were.

There was also a particular work pattern that you fell into, and you defined your activities by that pattern. You went to work at 6:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m.l or 10:00 p.m., and then you put in 8 hours. Period. If there was overtime available, you worked it as you either had to or volunteered to, but were well-compensated for the hassle. When your day was done, then so was your thinking about it (if you wanted to think about it off of the clock, that was fine, but there were no dollars attached to it). When you were working, you went at a set rate, and there were even some rewarding experiments where, if you met a quota, you were able to knock off early and receive a fully day's pay.

Viewing the new economy and its drivers, we are again confronted with a situation where a large number of workers are doing what amounts to piece work within the industry, yet the fundamental underlayment of work has been altered. We no longer work 8 hours a day, then leave our concerns, etc. at work. We bring it with us, especially those of us who are on call and are slaves to the devices that middle-schoolers find 'cool'. We still try to retain the trappings of what our parents called success.

What I propose is a different situation. What if we just took a step backwards and focused on what is important. Instead of having to have the newest car, what if we just found one that runs well, and leave it at that? What if we, instead of trying to keep up with the jonses, were our own people and simply relaxed? I see so many people get stressed out, and I am one at times, by all that we keep on our plate. We can't spend any time with our kids because of all that's going on, and then we wonder why they have discipline problems. In our misguided efforts to provide materially for our children and our families, we have neglected them emotionally.

This is why life is changing. This is why there is a new movement from the fast to the realistic, from the hyperefficient to the sanely-paced. It is why we are going to see a resurgence in the arts and an actual waning in the technology. It is time for us to take a stand, and for us to re-invent who and how we are. All it takes is a fair percentage of us to do that, and it will happen.

Instead of pawning my kids off this coming President's Day on either their grandparents or some daycare situation, I'm going to spend the day with them. Maybe this way, when I am old and feeble, they will find a day every once in a while to spend with me. I will eventually be unable to drive, and will probably be so glaucomic that I can't really use a screen (a hazard of this job), but I will be able to feel warm, unhurried, care and concern. When we're at the end of our life, the end of our rope, fat, naked and alone, the newest Blackberry and the jet ski that touched the water exactly once will abandon you.

This is the same reason a vast number of the last generation of blue collar workers died within a few years of their retirement, because in the quest to make life grand, the jobs made life secondary with the materialism. If those problems awaited our forebears, who were able to work 8 hours a day and who didn't have to be stressed out about carrying a pager around, what new kinds of problems await us? Sobering, isn't it.