In This Economy, Everyone is Suffering

I have actually had two “full time jobs” for the past five to six years. I work at a large insurance company full time, which is a job that I have had for the past ten years of my life, almost eleven, and am still happy with (shoot I’m happy to have a job in this economic climate, who am I kidding).

That in itself seems to a be luxury these days. And believe me, it’s not that I haven’t sweated it a little bit at times. There have been quite a few layoffs in our company, just none that have touched our very well managed department yet, thank goodness.

My “second job” has been as an online blogger and marketer for about the last five years. It started off as more of a hobby, and when I found that I could actually make a little bit of money on the side, it kind of escalated into my other “full time job”, and I love that because I get to use it as a creative outlet, whereas my “day job” isn’t creative at all, plus I get some extra pocket money on the side. It’s worked out very well, except lately it’s been dropping precipitously, as have a lot of other people’s sales and advertising revenue in these tough times for businesses based on consumers buying products.

I would say that if 2009 was bad, 2010 will be a “banner” bad year for a lot of businesses, including mine. I’m not sure if the merchants are funneling down their incredibly bad sales onto their commissions or what, but let’s just say things will be lean with the nice “extras” my sideline used to pay for in our household this year.

And I’m not complaining either. Shoot, I know that our situation is still a lot better than a lot of other folks out there who have straight up lost their homes and can barely put food on the table.

I’ve also noticed an inordinate amount of businesses I work for sending payments in late, sometimes skipping a few months in between, suddenly becoming very hard to get ahold of, and also unfortunately closing their doors without even saying anything, me just finding out vicariously through happenstance.

This is definitely the worst I’ve ever seen it. I really wish our politicians would focus more on getting jobs for people instead of things like healthcare, which in my opinion is secondary until we get more urgent matters solved. I’m wondering what’s in it for them that they are so adamant about solving this issue right away?

Anyways, I think less regulation on business would also be better. I mean cripes, the FTC just imposed new regulations saying that bloggers must disclose if they get paid or get a free product in exchange for a product review or face thousands in fines. Is this really what we’re wasting our time with now?