Business has been better than ever for the company I work for, then again it's mostly rich people who go to the theatre, and they contribute with the pound to its staying open. That could change. The company also started making people redundant before the recession. We'll see.

A lot of the retailers are going under - there are less places to sell our stuff. It makes it harder to make money.

They just laid off people at work.

aka "Half of atsonicpark's movie collection"

it won't .
I'm a teacher so i can't technically be made redundant unless i do something awful like huh wait i was gonna make a joke and i'm not supposed to.
anyway just like anyone i can feel prices go up and "sinistrose" just about anywhere. Businesses closing down and all.
So yeah i'm just watching the world falling apart; the only thing i can do to be useful is tell the kids not to waste their teenage life and start building their (no) future NOW; watch the news and be aware of what the world is like or at least be educated enough to make the right decisions when they have to.
Pretty abstract right now.

I imagine the problem your company faces is more from the prospect of cuts in government funding than from a lack of paying customers in that I imagine its still quite heavily subsidised.

Oddly, I might be in a slightly better financial situation than before. At least from perspective of job security. Worries last fall led me to make haste to the prospective employers, and I now am on the payroll of the university here. I have a fairly okay check streaming into my checking account now every two weeks--whereas before I was depending on the drip-by-drip income of the freelance writer, and the drips were getting slower and slower!

Nevertheless, I'll eel a lot more guilty now when I spend my money on the inevitable frivolities like beer, Long Island Iced Teas, Starbucks coffee, J. Crew Final Sale items, and overpriced 180-gram LP reissues.

Oh, yeah, and my TIAA/CREF stock-based retirement fund is, like, disappearing. What's up with that?

Not anymore. It's been over a year, I think, since the council cut funds to 56 art organisations. I'm all for it, even if it means I might lose my job, at one point.

Nice thing about my job is that while it's on the U campus, it's actually funded not by the state or by the U but by a fat cat journal association.

I'm going to hit the streets and hop trains as another drifter in a new lost generation.

i stopped working and went to college before the blood started to flow.
i still have some savings and there's no sign of decrease of precarious job offers.
i guess i will be ok.

Almost the same for me.

i'm still studying, but i guess it might get harder to find work as an illustrator when i finish my studies. i'll be in school for at least two more years though, so don't have to wory too much yet.

prob have to stop buying so much snacks for when im too stoned and playing ps3 on my hi def telly

second

hmmm.. back to school maybe?

i'm vaguely thinking about joining the army

i take it online sales don't balance this out then?

although it's been said that the recession won't affect our economy as bad as our neigboring countries (Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, to be exact) because we adopted Euro as our new currency starting January 1st, first signs of what's happening tell me it's gonna be way worse than expected. People are getting sacked from big companies (such as US Steel, Volkswagen, KIA etc.), unemployement rises and it's much harder to get a loan or mortgage these days in the bank.
As far as my job, I can say I'm pretty safe because our agency still has many assignments and frankly, I don't believe advertising spends will decrease significantly in comparsion to last year. So, I'm not really afraid of losing my job or something.

anything. it's mainly because it's an easy way to find a job (and i'm currently trapped in a pit of despair regarding work), plus it's physical work, and i would travel. on the downside i don't want to have to fight in any wars that i disagree with (i.e. most wars) and also i imagine most army dudes would be kind of not the type of people i would find it easy to get along with... not that i particulalrly find any type of people easy to get along with, but still.