Whole lot of nothing

Completed yet another 800-mile cross-country trek yesterday. The Deer Lodge Valley offered up a nice ground blizzard to keep me awake, and shooting stars intermittently kept me entertained between Glendive and Bismarck. But 12 hours is 12 hours. I'll do a little jig the day someone invents a car that drives itself.

Keeping ye olde blog updated has been a challenge. Not a whole lot to write about. The freelance assignments continue to trickle in. The needle on my savings account gauge gets a little closer to empty with every rent check and trip to Kettlehouse. Beyond that, life is an endless series of writing clips and applications. Feels a bit like fishing the Teton River. Whole lot of nothing.

In broader news, the Minneapolis Fed released its economic forecast for '09 a few days ago. Every state in the ninth district save North Dakota shook the magic 8 ball for community economies and got a resounding "outlook is bleak" (Three cheers for NoDakers and their tireless optimism). Employment to drop, manufacturing to decrease, ag outlook mixed. Income levels might go up a bit, but not enough to cover rising costs of living. Damn inflation. Some might see the downsizing or closing of some independent businesses in Missoula as indicators of a failing economy (Shakespeare and Co. closing its sattelite non-fiction storefront, World Games and Stoverud's closing), but it seems a bit early yet to make that call.

One bit of cynical humor to come out of all this economic turmoil: the founding of a new journalistic organization in New York. ASSME (American Society of Shit-canned Media Elite) held a big holiday to-do last week, and I hope the organization's membership swells nationally. Laughing in the face of mounting unemployment. Other stories on the layoffs make it sound like the media is going the way of the dinosaur and the dicso-themed roller rink without resisting or acknowledging it. And this depressive outlook has spread. I received and completed a survey for the University of Georgia today on my experiences in the field of journalism since graduating with my BA. Loaded with questions like "will broadcast radio be around in 20 years?" and "will newspapers be around in 20 years?" (Being from NoDak, I answered yes to all). I'm hoping its just widespread seasonal depression.