we're going camping in a little bit, I'm excited.

this week I was home the whole time, but didn't get as much done as I'd hoped. I did habitat one morning. it sucked, I hammered in siding for four hours. I got better at hammering though. One thing I will say about habitat... I did it three times this month, and every time I had a totally different job, which was awesome. I wanted to learn things, I learned things. And it's so nice to have a volunteer job where you don't really have to think. You don't have to motivate other people, sell them on your ideas, coordinate group activities, be a leader. just show up and use your arms. It's refreshing. Well... mentally refreshing, physically I felt like my arm was about to fall off.

I go back to work on monday. I'm excited to go back, but have a lot of complicated feelings. Was there progress on my project in the past four weeks? I know there were a few people working on it, but I never got a call, does that make me unimportant? What does our future have in store? Seems like another round of layoffs come up every month, what will the next one bring? Why can't things be better?

I never did get unemployment to work right. I got filed okay, got mail saying I was legit, claimed for two weeks and then on the third week, the system acted like it didn't know me. It said to call a number, but I was unable to get through every time I called. They don't put you on hold, they just say "system overloaded" and hang up. So I think it's a lost cause. Makes me really nervous for if I really do need it here in the future, for a longer term of not working. I talked to a fellow coworker last night who had another issue with it, couldn't even get it to start for him. So it's not just me.

I didn't get to fly yesterday. My instructor, who I haven't flown with in a month, said he might be back Friday. I was like, "Great I'll book us a plane!" but didn't hear back on that. I showed up in the morning, but he never did. He later texted me to say he wasn't back yet. But I was really depressed, because I'd been excited to fly with him, show him how I've improved, get closer on my landings which are getting so close now! I feel like flying is so wonderful, but there's so much other complicated crap going on around me, I wish I could just have this time of my life to work on it without distraction. I shouldn't look at an airplane and have all this go through my head. At a time when I'm learning to handle a plane, and make it my own, I'm in an industry I can't control at all. We can engineer an airplane that will fly at a given speed, will not spin uncontrolled out of the sky, will go up when you add power and will descend when you pull power, every time. the air is so certain. the rest of the planet... isn't.

even though i whine, bitch and complain in this journal all the time, at work i'm seen as a fairly positive person. there are these kids who work around me who do nothing but talk about layoffs, our tanking stock price, the unending downward spiral of the economy... i just don't get the thrill in discussing our demise.

first, i've seen the economy cycle before. hell just last year, skyrocketing gas prices lead to lower demand which lead to lower gas prices... that's how capitalism works. now nobody wants to buy a car, so car prices are dropping, which means some people who couldn't afford a car before can get one now, which means prices will go back up. it's the cycle.

but really i've learned that if i'm just annoyingly positive at work, people quit talking to me about how bad it is.

what can you do? if we're all in the bread line next year, then we're all in the bread line. i'll try to hitchhike to the library to update my lj. I don't understand 23-year-olds lamenting their retirement funds going downhill... you're 23 with a retirement fund! who cares what's going on, you're ahead! and losing ten grand or so in your 401K is NOT the same as someone breaking into your house and stealing cash, I don't care what they say. we still have shares of something. the way these guys talk about their retirement funds, you'd think they were going to take the money out for vacationing but decided against it.

The only downward spiral I see is people freaking out. supply and demand curves have a way of coming back... people will always look to the horrible side of everything.

the worst part is that these people i hear around me are the ones who have jobs. you'd think, if anyone, they'd be the least gloomy?