Big Plans, Really Big Big Plans

 I've spent my life a planner, maintaining a safe, secure location to better manage those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune like Hamlet. I have three tomes I feel a need to study. One is a spiritual tour of Flannery O'Conner's The Habit of Being. The second is Mark Twain's autobiography that was published 100 years after his death and the third being the complete works of Shakespeare. Plus there is that TBR shelves of books, a library of children stories I picked up at an estate sale and my mother's recommendation of reading the Bible.

It's more of less picking a path. My disorganized system truly stinks. This week, I read Elizabeth Greenwood's book about how people purposely disappear and why it truly does not work well for them. But like all things, there is a good reason for some to disappear like victims of spousal abuse. Most people who try to disappear do it for the money. And interesting enough they are rarely prosecuted for making false insurance claims. They are just denied the claim.

We have a time bomb in our country and that is unpaid college debt. Having financed my own education, I am not too sympathetic. Having been young, I do think assuming so much debt should be limited by the lenders. Manana is the rallying cry of the young. You know "Someday Never Comes" is more than a song by Creedence Clearwater Revival. 

I don't think student debts should be wiped clean. But I do think there should be responsibility of the lender to monitor how much is borrowed versus the how much that person will be able to pay back. I remember a young lady who was bemoaning she would owe 10,000 in student loans back in 1980. For the student who owes 100.000, I wonder in 40 years will inflation reduce it's sting. Elizabeth Greenwood supposedly had flirted with the idea of a fake death to get rid of her college debt. I think it was just a thread she ran with in the book. She is very smart, and I suspect has quite a profitable career in writing waiting for her.

I never had trouble getting a job. One reason was the fact I always had a job and would work any job available. I was a professional in that I taught school. But I have been a house cleaner, lawn mower, baby sitter, peach grader, cashier, food worker, waitress, bank worker, cook, dishwasher. My mother is from Appalachia and there is no shame in honest work. For the most part me and my siblings have been good workers. One of my siblings wasn't so much a poor worker, she just never chose careers that used her natural talents.

Therein lies the rub comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet comes to mind. Young people going to college or university don't have to have a car nor do they need to live in an apartment like a young working person of independent means. Why aren't kids living in dorms and eating in a dining hall? They probably still are. Not every young person can handle a part time job and full time college which is what I essentially did. We all dressed like hippies in the seventies which helped me out financially big time in college. My roommate and I joked how our favorite jeans were standing by our beds every morning waiting on us.

When you are young or at least for me, that is when my pride got the best of me. I feel that pain for young people now. I would like to share with them that one day; you will not care. You will want to apologize to that kid you picked on. You will see where that kid that had everything really was not as lucky as you were. 

And the gist of this post was really how everything lately reminds me how much time I have left in this world. How well will I spend the rest of it. Next week, you'll find out which I have chosen to read during the summer of 2021. Of course, I got to get a better schedule for my day. Oh my. And even though there is a big part of me that wants people to pay back their student loans for living so high on the hog; as a country we need to give a low interest rate and possibly some way to erase a portion of their loans. They need to pay something. But not an 11 percent interest rate when you can currently purchase a house with a 3 to 4 percent loan. 

I'm leaning toward reading the children's stories. The 26 books have the date 1941. I doubt they were ever read. They really need to be read.