Hamster Wheel

Hi all,

My first jump into the blogging world.  I have to admit, I write so much for my job (grants, reports, presentations) that to think about writing a blog, is not appealing to me.   I rarely Facebook, do not have a twitter account and only once posted a comment on a news story about the last presidential election.  I Google'd it and it's still a 'live' comment, pretty cool.

Okay so what do I want to write about?  (by the way the box with Post title is still staring at me) I guess I could write about my experience thus far in grad school and the challenges of juggling work, school, family.  But that really is a 'been there done that' topic.  Most people I know are struggling with the demands of everyday life.  Schedules and deadlines...meetings and have to's.  We are busier now than ever before or so most headlines tell us: Overworked Americans.

We work more, vacation less...Are we happier? Watching Bill Maher the other night sarcastically comment on the new iPhone 5 and how people had to rush out to get it because it's that much bigger, made me think of our shifting priorities.  Why are we working so hard?  Why are we working so much?  Sure there is the rising costs of EVERYTHING.  College debt of the 21st century is the new credit card debt of the 80's:  Student loans

We know our children need an education to survive 'out there', but what type and at what cost?  It's interesting to me that some parents will pay/spend 200k+ for a non specific degree for their undecided son or daughter that has never really had a job.  They may have a prestigious degree but do they have all the skills they need to survive? 

So the rising costs of education and our basic costs of living contribute to our hamster on a wheel experience but there also exists the reality that we have created a frenzy of consumerism that perpetuates our need to work more.  A telling article by Anup Shah highlights in stark contrast our global priorities vs. our global needs.   Global Consumerism .  We can decide as individuals that it is possible to consume less and increase our own quality of life.  However, it is a difficult concept to hand down to future generations given all of the access and ease of our consumption. For me, I'll start with my own cell.  I have the iphone4S and do not plan to 'upgrade' until Siri tells me to.