Goals, the current financial situation

I sometimes feel like I am floating aimlessly with very little control over what I do in my life. (because...) But every few years or so when I take an account of my lot in life, I feel surprisingly effective at getting closer to my goals without really noticing. I am not sure what my career goals really are, but I find myself making money from two sources that tend to be stable or in more demand as the economy tanks.

Intellectual property fields are rumored to be fairly impervious to economic dips. First, the funding comes from rich people or corporations who are affected by the economy, but whose capital is relatively stable. Second, people always have to pay for the inventions they want to use. That doesn't change all of a sudden. So the revenue generated on an ongoing basis from past work stays fairly constant.

Community college enrollment goes up when people cannot find jobs. The state unemployment
office has programs that support retraining at community colleges, and I have received a couple of those myself this year. People who don't make enough to live on will finally decide to go to school full time. The result is last minute classes opening up that I can teach.

So here I am, one of those long unemployed people, finding work. But then, no surprise, I've been at the leading edge of this whole thing. Maybe I am at the leading edge of things turning around.

Anyway, my goals were:

• to find work that uses my education and pays more,
  
• to find a job that allows me to have a life outside of work,
• several comfort measures that are met by working from home.

If I can live on what I am doing until one of them picks up and shows me a future, I will have all of those things. The contract work pays enough that I don't have to spend that much time. The teaching takes a lot of time, and only pays a bit, but may turn up health insurance relatively soon. It also gives me a work place interaction that is favorable. I am not sure where it leaves my computation neuro/bio informatics aspirations. With 30- 40 working years ahead of me, I feel there is still time. I need to get the lower levels of Maslow's heirachy settled before I can reach the upper rungs.

I was thinking about my friend Xan who is facing a lot of stress in the current housing mess, and who has been out of touch because they're so stressed about it. They were riding high for a long time, really, and it must suck to be struggling. (She said when I last saw her, "I am ready to be rich white woman again.") I discussed with my dad the likelihood that my house value would go down after I bought it. He was worried that I would be upset about it. Instead the value went up. weird! It has recently come down to what I paid for it, probably lower. Nonetheless, I feel pretty immune to the financial problems our markets are giving us. I was always struggling. My misery is enjoying the company. I am glad we are finally hearing about the real issues the world faces, and this is one big part of the problem that has now collapsed.

You know, on regulation of those "markets," does the US government bill for that? Wall street should be paying for the time it takes congress to figure out how to deal with them. It's like a bunch of greedy guys got together and figured out to set up a system that would allow them to make money in some certain ways. They are free to do so, right? But then our government regulators have to patrol a complicated, opaque system set up by smart people to be that way. The fire department charges when they come to a false alarm; Congress should charge for having had to discuss Wall Street issues over the years. If they had, then sure, this current problem would be discussed pro bono, and they might even toss in $700b to help out. My taxes should go for education, welfare, and social justice, not wars and discussion of wall street loopholes. Well anyway.

And we hear about the environment on mainstream media. That's an improvement, even if it is 20 - 30 years late.

Home ownership was a huge goal for me, and now I wonder what goals I will set next. I expect it will be awhile before I come up with them.