Feb 2, 2012

Random thoughts...

Some days are the most amazing in your life.  Other days suck the life out of you and you wonder why you even try to fight the good fight.  Struggle after struggle, feeling that it is all for naught.  Calling, begging, pleading with one government agency after another.  Not getting any answers.  Being given a random confirmation number with a promise of a call-back.  I am starting to feel like a dinosaur in this day and age.  I want to call a help center and get REAL help.  I am so fucking tired of pushing 1 and 2, just to get a whole new round of numbers.  I have a friend who threw her phone and smashed it.  I understand.  There are wonderful benefits to this new society that we live in, but we have lost so much in the way.  Human contact. What about the people who don't have an email address or a cell phone?  What happens to them?  I remember the days of sitting down to write a letter.  I would pick out my prettiest stationary and get my favorite pen. The writing would begin.  Envelope and stamp, boom I was done.  What happened to those days?  Do our children even know how to write a proper letter without spellcheck and smileys?  I doubt it.  Letter writing is becoming an ancient form of communication. That to me is sad.  Why check the mail nowadays?  It is only bills and advertisements.  No more letters from Grand mom and Pop Pop.  I am guilty.  I have a smart phone.  GPS and I am in love with my laptop.  Yet I still remember the other way.  My friend who is 74 and goes to the library everyday and tried to fill out resumes online. He winds up getting so frustrated that he goes outside to smoke his pipe and gather his thoughts.  Than he calls me.  I hear the weariness in his voice.  I find it heartbreaking.  He is of an era where you walked into a company and met with a real person and shook their hand.  You spoke and sold yourself.  This new method of getting a job doesn't make sense to him.  I have seen him cry.  He wants to be useful.  This now makes one year that he has been out of work.  He is an attorney for the securities industry.  Everyone tells him to retire.  He says he would rather be dead.  I understand.  Truly I do.

3 comments:

JeannetteLS said...

I just found your blog through Walking Man... this entry made me tear up. I feel for him. One of my best friends hates the computers she is forced to use.

For me, blogging and the way I use email has become like letter-writing. We use long sentences and wander. I refuse to text until I no longer have a choice. I do not care for twitter. And I still love maps.

And every job I've ever gotten has been through personal contact, THEN the computer or something more removed. Networking still can work, but we still wind up needing to fill out the online crap.

I feel for him. And this is the third post I've read. They all made me want to answer.

Lori said...

JeannetteLS- I just found this comment. Thought I had published them all. I, like you, have always gotten a job via meeting the hiring manager in person and sitting down and selling myself. I believe even McDonalds now has online applications. I love my computer. When I put myself in his shoes though, someone who was born in 1937, I can only imagine what goes through that mind of his. I had just gotten him familiar with a desktop, when I got a new laptop. Not having a mouse made him crazy, lol. Sometimes I feel like we forget that the senior population is exploding and we as a country are so unprepared to deal with them properly. It is heartbreaking. They don't know a twitter from a tweet. I hope we find a way to incorporate them into our society so they feel like they have a sense of purpose. Thanks for coming by. xoxo

Lori said...

JeannetteLS- I just found this comment. Thought I had published them all. I, like you, have always gotten a job via meeting the hiring manager in person and sitting down and selling myself. I believe even McDonalds now has online applications. I love my computer. When I put myself in his shoes though, someone who was born in 1937, I can only imagine what goes through that mind of his. I had just gotten him familiar with a desktop, when I got a new laptop. Not having a mouse made him crazy, lol. Sometimes I feel like we forget that the senior population is exploding and we as a country are so unprepared to deal with them properly. It is heartbreaking. They don't know a twitter from a tweet. I hope we find a way to incorporate them into our society so they feel like they have a sense of purpose. Thanks for coming by. xoxo