For those of us out hustling for dwindling ends, all that talk in Washington and Wall Street seems pretty far removed from our every day lives. If you are like me, the words “stimulus,” “bailouts” and the dreaded “R” word—Recession, make your eyes glaze over.
For many of us, the economic crisis means, turning down your first job because you can’t afford your student loan payments. It means the doors to your parent’s alma mater may be closed. It means the house down the street is vacant.
Some days I entertain thoughts of hitting the stroll to make ends meet. Well, maybe not really, but Nevada has also enjoyed a surge in applications for their brothels, so clearly the idea is growing in popularity. Hopefully it never gets to that point, but just in case, I’ve started running a few extra miles a week.
For a long time, I kept my business just that – limiting my discussions of uncertainty, frustration, and my fight to maintain faith and hope to a select few. The moment I started speaking more openly about my plight, the better I felt. Not only did I realize that I’m not alone in this, but I was able to learn from hearing other voices.
Enter The Recession Diaries. This will be the place for news about the real lives impacted by the economy. It will be a gathering place to hear individual stories about life under the R-word: the good, bad, and other.
Here we will share our triumphs of how the recession is pushing us to new heights of creativity. It will be the place to commiserate when one of us falls through the cracks.
I’m looking forward to guiding this discussion in the coming months.
If you’d like to share your story, please Email me at therecessiondiaries@gmail.com.
Michael Arceneaux writes the Recession Diaries blog for The Root.
Michael Arceneaux hails from Houston, lives in Harlem and praises Beyoncé’s name wherever he goes. Follow him on Twitter.