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THE THING THAT STARTED IT ALL
THE THING THAT STARTED IT ALL is my desire (not a strong enough word) to be free from Fortune 500 Corporate Amerika; my longing to not be a slave to it. WHY? Because I resent the amount of loyalty demanded/expected/required while absolutely none is given in return. I am so dependent on Fortune500 CorpAmerika that I am basically a slave to it. My entire livelihood is tied to it, so much so that if it were to cast me out (if I were to lose my job), I would be devastated. It would cripple me and the ability of my family to survive.
So many of us are living in fear of losing our job, especially in the current economic environment and companies know that. Moral is in the toilet, and people feel (rightly so) that they have no voice and no choice. The talkers and pretenders are the ones rewarded. I don’t like the feeling that a coworker I have a good rapport with is suddenly someone I should distance myself from because someone has taken a disliking to that person. I won’t do it, but there is that constant nagging it the back of your mind that you may get pushed under the bus with them.
WHAT HAPPENS IF you lose your job? Do your circumstances dictate that you must find one immediately? What happens if you can’t, how do you survive? What are the things that you absolutely cannot survive without? Without food you and your family will starve, so what are some options there? What about shelter, will you be able to retain your current shelter? You have to have shelter not only to protect you from the elements, but to protect and store your belongings. You have to have clothing and the ability to bathe if you are to have any hope of finding new employment. If you have kids, they need to be clean and have clean clothes for school or CPS will take them. And so on, and so forth. Before any of that happens you need to take some measures to mitigate those risks. Your rent or mortgage is one thing in which there is most likely no flexibility or wiggle room. You pay what you pay with no negotiation possible. Food on the other hand, while still one of the two main necessities, has some cost flexibility. In addition to buying cheaper food and perhaps eating less (in a worst case scenario), you could grow some of your own food. Growing just 10% of my family’s food would free up $75 each month. Thing is, the garden has to be growing before the financial disaster strikes. So that is one of the first steps I am undertaking. This is not going to be a blog about me complaining. It is going to be a record of the steps I take to take back my liberty.
THE REASON FOR RESILIENCY: A RANT
So I am going to have to take a half day off of work today due to a sick kid, my wife and I split the day because she doesn’t get paid if she doesn’t work. I was off yesterday, and in the environment which I work I feel uncomfortable taking this afternoon off, even though I got to work at 6 AM and will put in 6 hours plus use ½ vacation day. It’s ridiculous to have to dread using a vacation day for a sick kid. It’s also offensive that “they” refuse to allow me to do my job remotely. There are many employees that can, and there are contract workers (temps) that can do it. There is nothing about my job that requires me to be in my cube to do it, nothing. There seems to be no company policy around it, it seems simply to be a matter of who you know. I despise the environment I work in. Moral is in the toilet, you can’t believe anything management says (like reducing salaries by 6% to avoid layoffs, then having in excess of 40 people laid off one month later), the “more with less” attitude constantly being forced down our throats, never knowing where the axe will fall next, etc. What it must be like to work in an environment where you treated like an adult and treated with dignity.
Even if you are one that does work in that type of environment or for that type of company, I think you should pay attention to this video on downward class migration. Coming soon to a society near you!
So what’s the point? Be prepared. I may have said this before but it bears repeating: I am more of a resilientist than a true prepper or survivalist. However there is a lot of crossover, so much so that at times it is hard to tell the difference. I think my distinction between the two lies in the purpose or approach of each. A prepper is planning for disaster(s) that they feel are eminent, whereas a resilientist is looking at having more liberty and freedom in their life. And a survivalist is prepping for the worst possible scenario to happen. A survivalist may have 10,000 rounds of ammo for each of their guns but hasn’t updated their resume in 6 years. What good is that ammo if the disaster that strikes isn’t global economic meltdown but the loss of a job? That would be a personal economic meltdown and the resume would be a far better tool for dealing with it than the guns and ammo. Now sure, the resume doesn’t mean squat if the economy collapses but which of those two scenarios has a greater likelihood of occurring?
I think Resilientist, Prepper, and Survivalist are varying degrees of the same mentality. Perhaps the difference stems from the motivating factor/driving force (belief) that leads us to do what we do.
I need to be able to live my life on my terms. I no longer want to be a debt serf.
SuburbanResilience 