To my Voyeuristic Diary

I guess it's tomorrow already, so I can post about my initial thoughts from this evening.  Now, dear reader, you get a taste of something less insightful, or at least far less earth shattering or opinionated. The fact is, I'm in a dire need for a career change, or a job change into something resembling a career.  I had an epiphany the other night when I was randomly searching the internet for nothing in particular.  It occurred to me to search for positions in living history institutions, and lo, and behold, such a thing does exist.  That led to a short search and I found apprenticeships for preservation.  So here is my concern...would I be foolish to give up a steady, flexible, but low paying job and throw caution to the wind and work in Rural or Urban Pennsylvania for comparable pay, but no longevity in an effort to build experience and hope for a better shot at a real career, or tough it out and forge a new path here, albeit slowly?

Life Changing. A double entendre.

I can't help but wonder how this "stalled" generation is going to sort itself out.  College graduates with debt can't afford to move out of their parents' houses, let alone start their retirements savings, bear children, and save for their college.  How are we going to handle it?  There will have to be a push against our materialistic culture (of which I'm still guilty, in some sense), and a return to practices that we haven't seen or used since the depression.  I feel that this must include growing our own food, using our bodies for transportation, and supporting each other in enterprise, instead of corporate entities.  But, how do we undo, or redo 70 years of damage to our cities, and our rural areas?  How do we shrink cities and infrastructure to  levels manageable by our current population and income levels?  How do we balance the modern sensibilities of home with the need for tighter living spaces?  And how do we put the brakes on a consumption based economy without destroying "the system." (Because though many people allegedly hate "the system," we're still pretty dependent on it for jobs, goods, etc., so I guess we should ask how do we redefine "the system?")

This isn't all doomsday talk, I promise.  Just...more recently I've felt moved to be a little closer "to the land" (I have to put this colloquial stuff in quotes so I don't sound too pathetically idealistic and tree-huggy, because it's a bit deeper than a love for the environment) in a way that I've never felt before.  I couldn't wait to get out of the country and into the urban core of the city (even though I regard my house as suburban, most people can't comprehend that distinction when the house is 120 years old).  Now I worry about if my yard is large enough to have chickens and grow grains.  My parents live on a farm, and I worry that someday they'll sell it because Mom doesn't like living there.  It's not that I necessarily want to live on that farm (that is to be determined), but I would like the option to live on a farm, if I so choose.  And with current land prices, inheritance is about my only option.

On the other hand, my passions still lie in cities.  Not nameless, faceless cities, but a city of neighborhoods, where people know their neighbors, and know their grocers, and God-forbid, care about each other.  I think this may be the key to our survival as a generation, and the legacy that we're responsible for leaving.  We've been weaned from the rules of good society in a "take-care-of-number-one" mentality that is slowly destroying our ties to each other, and letting corporations take advantage of our increasing need to feel something more.  They just substitute goods, where we need humanity.  So whether it be in the city or country, (and heaven help us if we must have these accursed postwar suburbs for awhile longer)  community and a cultivated, rather than learned sense of values (because our generation learned the wrong set for the most part, it seems) will be the keys to our success.  I think one thing that defines our upbringing was the notion that we could do anything, or be anything.  Of course, the harsh reality is that we can't.  But if we team up, maybe, just maybe, we can.