A Brave New World

Hello everyone. It's been a while, but perhaps it's for the best. While I will admit that I have been dealing with a lot of personal life issues, at the same time, I'm looking at all the events that are currently unraveling in Washington, and how it affects most of what I have previously written on this blog. Although I don't want to give up on writing articles, I feel that many federal agencies which have been created to protect the civil rights and liberties of workers and college are quickly going to become erased from existence. For example, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which has helped me previously with an issue I had early on in my career as a PhD Student is gone, most likely for good.

As a consequence of all these changes, I am mostly at a loss with how to proceed with this blog. As the United States is quickly descending into an authoritarian dystopian nightmare where people can be taken off the streets, thrown into trucks, and shipped off to concentration camps in El Salvador for being too brown, it seems like just about everything that I have written about on this blog has become little more than a distant dream of a better, safer America.

I suppose if I wanted to, I could try to keep up with all the sweeping changes that are happening within the current administration, but then I feel like I would just be parroting what a lot of independent news organizations have already been doing. I feel like I could probably do this well enough, but there wouldn't be really anything to make me stand out from any other sort of political blog that exists within the spectrum.

That said, perhaps it is a good thing that my blog never really gained that much traction. Perhaps, as time allows, I will expand into different topics, or rebrand this blog entirely to find some little niche that I can fit in and give a unique perspective on things. I have experienced a lot in the 30-some years that I have been alive, but I'm not sure how to express my experiences in a way that would be beneficial to any potential readers.

I'm currently nearing the end of my PhD program, and rather than being excited about my future, instead I'm dreading it. I'm about to be burdened with $100,000 in debt, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has been gutted by the current administration, and job prospects for research scientists seem dire at best. In many ways, I felt that I have been lied to my entire life. Teachers and advisors used to always tell me that you can't go wrong pursuing a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and now that Trump is in the Whitehouse for a second term, I feel like I've more or less wasted the last 10 years of my life. Worse still, I have to find a way to pay off a crippling amount of debt while being unemployable and unmarketable in a stagflating economy brought on by Donald Trump's stupid trade wars, and his obsession with robbing tax dollars from the federal government, so that it can redistributed to wealthy billionaires and oligarchs.

Therefore, until I figure out how to move forward on this website, I will most likely be extending my hiatus indefinitely. Maybe I will explore other forms of writing. I have some good ideas for novels (in my opinion, anyway), and creative writing is always fun. Or I guess I can just go back to playing video games. I'm making some good progress on Binding of Isaac, at least. Everything else in my life is hanging on by a thread, but at least I'm winning at video games, so there's that.

Anyway, to those of you who have been devoutly following my blog, thank you very much for your support. Perhaps one of these days in the future, I will find new topics to discuss, and expand the scope of this website. In the meantime, however, it's a struggle. Good luck to everyone that's been weathering the shitstorm brought on by this current president. I have a feeling we're all going to need it. It's hard to believe that in a short matter of months, this country has gone to the dogs. Nothing lasts forever though, I suppose, least of all empires. I guess that's it for now. Until next time!