How Did This Happen?

The question I kept coming back to this past Wednesday as I waited in the lobby of a Florida Job Services office was, "How did I come to this point?"

I was there for an orientation session, part of employment counseling that's required for people who collect unemployment insurance. It was a sobering experience. Every time I start to get numb to the fact that all the work I put in during the past 22 years to build my sports writing career was (apparently) for nothing, something like that orientation session smacks me down again.

But ... we got through it. Just like we'll get through all of it. This is a good spot to drop this year's most popular sports cliche: It is what it is.

Now, I look at the morning news shows and the headlines on the news Web sites and I wonder, "How did the nation come to this point?" I wish I'd paid more attention in ECO 1001 class at the University of Florida in 1989, although I'm not sure this kind of utter economic bewilderment was covered.

What happened to the world? Does anyone know how all of this came to be? Lehman Brothers and the rest ... were all those too-smart-to-fart Wall Street geniuses too short-sighted to see this coming? The dot.com bubble, the housing bubble, 9-11, Iraq, increased gas prices, the rise of China, dwindling oil supply ... it all seems to be connected, somehow, but how?

And was all this macro-economic stuff the reason I lost my job with the newspaper? Was there anything I could have done, in that context, to better prepare our family for our own personal economic downturn? Anything I could have done to prevent myself from becoming unceremoniously unemployed?

Was there anything our country's leaders could have done, can do, about what's happening in the world at large? Anything they can do to keep this country from collapsing?

I wish I knew. I wish anyone knew.

Ah, well. At least the Rays and the Red Sox start a three-game series today that could decide the American League East. Should be quite a hoot.