Making my lemonade.

I permanently moved out of my home and began supporting myself at the age of 22. At the time I left home (after college, after my first stint at grad school, after years abroad) I found myself in the situation where I didn't know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and so I was willing to try out just about anything. Which I did.

From my first job to where I am at now, I have deciphered more or less what I am good at and made a career out of it. I am not going to say that in this career I have earned obscene amounts of money because I'd be lying if I did; however, I have earned enough money to make a pretty nice life for myself and situate myself comfortably in what I consider to be the middle class.

At least until recently I felt this way...

In the past year I've watched gas go up from $2.20 a gallon to the $3.79 I paid today. I have watched my weekly groceries go up from what they used to be to roughly 30% more. I have seen my electric bill a certain way, seen it lowered as a result of my replacing regular lightbulbs to energy efficient, only to see the electric bill go up again for God knows what reason.

No area of my life has been unaffected by this drastic change in the economy. And I ask myself, when does it end? what is it going to take? gas prices are up because supposedly there is no gas, so now gas has ethanol and corn farmers get subsidies to use more of their corn for ethanol so wheat farmers want to be corn farmers and there isn't enough wheat (or corn) to feed people so bread goes up and animals don't have as many grains to be fed so meat and dairy go up...

And just like that, the cost of living doubles and our paychecks shrink and you wonder how to fix it or if this is temporary and if all these excuses are even true. Then you think about the fact that there are pharmaceuticals in our water. And you just want it to go back to the way it was.