Economic Backlash

My industry is now beginning to feel the crunch of the current economy. You know it's bad when wealthy people (I'm not talking rich people, I mean in the Chris Rock sense of the world wealthy "they sign the checks for the rich people to cash") are having difficulties digging up capital to build stuff. These wealthy people are no longer wanting to break ground so easily anymore because they are having similar problems that schmucks with bad credit (like me) typically only do and that is a very scary thing.

I'm not big into Reaganomics; as the current situation proves, we are in fact in a "trickle up" economy enough people defaulted on loans and mortgages that it actually created an effect. However, I do believe that there needs to be some type of bailout enacted in order to allow capital to start flowing to these people again, because (selfishly) these people like to build things. This keeps us architects/engineers fat and happy little piggies.

Right now is definitely a lean time, admittedly I actually have some down time during the day which is a bit frightening. I'm not used to having down time during work, typically me checking my email or venturing to my messageboards is a task left to a sneaky 5 minutes rounding out the hour so that I can take a mental break. However, now is the time to "take stock" as they say: I can start my PE exam studies, finally make sense of my past calculations and actually file and of course actually talk with the people in my office.

However, a little part of me is worried that people will get laid off and that I may be one of them. *sigh* Realistically, it doesn't seem like they would let me go since I'm pretty much the engineer in charge on a daily basis. The head structural engineer is typically off to meetings or off to handle larger problems/issues with the site guys and the big boss is off garnering clients for us and handling money issues. However, it gets to a point in any business' financial outlook that no one's job is safe and I've just coming up to my year, so who knows if I'm expendable or not.

*sigh* I think everything is OK though, I just needed to vent my feelings a bit and my general paranoia (which my boss and the COO typically point at me and laugh about, "awww, poor Eris, she's gettin' the shakes again!"). So I'm just going to get back to some busy work with this current project and get my head and heart in gear.