Musings Report 2017:28 7-15-17 Are Your Own Buffers Thinning?
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Are Your Own Buffers Thinning?
This week I explored the idea that financial buffers in our socio-economic system have been thinned to the point of failure by the policies put in place to "save" the system from a major re-set in 2008-09. Our Financial Buffers Are Thinning.
There is a personal parallel to this: we each have our own reserves/buffers to absorb crises, increased challenges and spikes of stress. These include internal psychological buffers (emotional resilience), the buffers provided by supportive friends and family, and the financial buffers of savings and assets owned free and clear that can lessen the impact of financial blows such as declines in income or sudden increases in expenses.
In thinking about buffers, I've concluded my own personal buffers have been thinned to the point where I no longer have the internal reserves to deal with chronic overwork.
Longtime readers may have picked up a that a year ago (July 2016), a mini-crisis in my mother-in-law's health (she's 86 and in pretty good health for her age) forced us to reconfigure our lives and business to enable us to spend more time in Hawaii to provide more support to my Mom-in-law, and to prepare for the day when she can no longer drive and no longer live 100% independently.
This required a major renovation of living quarters that soaked up huge amounts of cash, time and energy.
No sooner had we more or less finished this multi-month effort than my sister-in-law broke her wrist and could no longer care for her husband, who was invalided by an aggressive brain tumor, surgery and chemotherapy last year.
This dumped our real-world business entirely in my lap along with the Of Two Minds blog/writing/author business, and I quickly realized that I'm too old (63) for this workload and stress level.
I don't know if it's due to my own sensitivity to the feeling my buffers have been worn down to paper-thin fragility or not, but it seems to me that the general rise of insecurity and overwork is thinning many individuals' buffers and this manifests in more impatience, road rage, chronic stress-related disorders, etc.
I wonder what else can account for the dramatic rise in red-light running that we've witnessed in both California and Hawaii other than a systemic loss of psychological and emotional buffers?
What can we do to rebuild our internal buffers? A recent article on stress concludes that exercise and conscious cognitive-meditation techniques are the best responses to toxic stress. When is stress good for you?
Regular physical activity is the most important behaviour that one can do to maintain brain and body health.
Overwork often tends to generate unhealthy feedback loops: we get too stressed, tired and short of time to get regular exercise, which then increases our stress levels and exhaustion, and so on.
Our sleep tends to suffer, further degrading our ability to cope productively. Our state of exhaustion causes us to lose discipline and we end up eating too much comfort food/junk food, further sapping our ability to recover.
Ultimately, the solution is to reconfigure one's life to reduce chronic overwork and stress. I'm attempting to do so, but as we all know, it isn't easy, as our choices impact others and any reduction in work is typically followed by a reduction in income.
Work-leisure balance is always dynamic, and it doesn't necessarily get easier as we age. At least that's been my experience.
The first step is to consciously monitor one's own buffers and take action before they thin to the breaking point.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
We Do These Things Because They're Easy: Our All-Consuming Dependence on Debt 7/14/17
Our Financial Buffers Are Thinning 7/13/17
The "News" Is Content-Free 7/12/17
What's the Safest Investment in Troubled Times? 7/11/17
The Inevitability Of DeGrowth 7/10/17
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Great news: my niece was offered a full-time position and a higher salary at her new employer in Hawaii's astronomy sector.
Market Musings: the US Dollar
The US dollar has been dropping as market players digest the risk that the Federal Reserve might not raise rates as aggressively as they've been signaling. Higher interest rates push the currency higher, as capital flows into whatever currency/economy is offering higher returns. If rates don't edge higher, the USD will suffer.
Is the USD decline a new long-term trend or a buy-the-dip opportunity? One factor that doesn't seem to get much air play is the Fed stopped expanding its balance sheet in early 2015, while the other central banks have continued aggressively expanding their balance sheets. Eventually this might matter, and at the point,the USD will likely benefit.
As for the chart: right now it's ugly, and the decline will face a test at the support line around 93.
A definitive break below 93 and the 200-week moving average at 92 would signal a major Bear market in the USD.
Alternatively, a bounce off 93 and a recovery of the 50-week MA around 98 would suggest the Bull trend remains intact.
From Left Field
150 years ago, a world-famous philosopher called busyness the sign of an unhappy person--good old Kierkegaard...
It’s not just New Jersey and Illinois — many states are facing budget trouble (via Joel M.)
Chinese in the Russian Far East: a Geopolitical Time Bomb?
More Germans are at risk of severe poverty than ever before--never heard this before...
The New Climate -- long essay on Europe's need for a new sort of union...
Young people check their privilege – and feel deeply disappointed
Read This Before You Ever Debate "Capitalism"
The pressure to work more and sleep less is driving a global epidemic with worrying consequences, says neuroscientist Matt Walker.
6 Reasons the Dark Ages Weren’t So Dark --post-IMperial fragmentation united by the church...
David Graeber interview: ‘So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary’
Germany’s Newest Intellectual Antihero
What happened when Walmart left-- an extremely insightful report from Coal Country....
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." Kierkegaard
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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