The Nation We Live In, a Collection of Essays and Short Stories

The roller coaster of life contains tons of up and downs. The financial and emotional turbulence can be nagging. We all feel it, often.  Yet our idea in this chapter is to harken back to one's happiness level. Can you achieve your own unique happy? Sometimes I wonder if richer citizens are happier than the middle class, and the poorer class of society. Are they? Are the luxurious and affluent lifestyle and house living residents truly happier, than those neighbors and fellow stores patrons that are less rich? My current residential city of Austin, Texas is and has been overgoing some massive changes during just the past 5 years. Historically, my local city was known during the 1990's time period as a sleepy, cheap, and alternative College town. A cultural example would be Richard Linklater's movie titled, "Slacker".  A slacker type resident is a person who simply does just enough to get by financially on their own. Slacker lifestyle folks would rather sp...

Everyone in America is a salesperson. In some form or another, each individual American citizen is constantly selling something. For example, the typical American 9-5 commuting worker needs to impress their employer with their sales goals, content creation, accounting acumen or marketing wizardry. As the world turns and changes with each new day, the worker-bee must continue to sell their abilities and skills to both their customers and bosses alike. The employee is perpetually scrutinized, with the question, "Why is my work important, needed, and relevant?" Even your close non-business and fun-time friends are salespeople . Why? How? Well, your friends are constantly trying to enrich your friendship through excellent jokes, insightful wisdom, or enticing invites to parties and social events. All friends hope mutual fun times will translate into wild, laughable and riveting stories, upon a later date. A rhetorical question for friendom is, "Why would...

As the winter Holiday College Football Bowl Game season trots along, the big-timing television broadcasts and corporate sponsorships are profound evidence to grant College Athletes a stipend . It has become painfully obvious, now is the time to start paying these collegiate athletes. Prominent University scholarship athletes are unpaid indentured servants. These young adults sacrifice their entire physical bodies, innate well-being, reduced study time, and more in honor of representing their employers. Whoops, I mean Universities. The NCAA and United States judicial courts have turned a blind eye for way too long on this controversial subject. In my opinion, these entertaining, constantly producing and hard-working college athletes deserve to be paid a monthly stipend during their participating semesters. They should NOT be paid during their summer vacations and scholastic breaks.  How much $$ should this monetary monthly allowance and stipend be? I think the stipend sho...

One word to start, Capitalism . Capitalism is the basis for our entire 50 state nation's economy. It is also why despite the government, charity, and righteous citizens best wishes, affordable housing is a losing cause. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in select spots and locations where affordable housing can be helpful. For example, let's say an honest hardworking American has a major medical setback which bankrupts them? This unlucky human perhaps deserves affordable housing. Let's say unfortunately a person genetically predisposed to alcoholism and drug addiction needs to wean themselves back to sobriety and productivity? This person deserves a rehabilitating healthy environment and affordable housing too. Let's say, there is an earthly natural disaster which ruins neighborhoods and displaces human families. I personally think these families deserve temporary affordable housing. The above-aforementioned instances are 3 excellent real-life...

Jim Acosta of the heaving, hard question asking Cable News Network (CNN) and his fellow journalists are the true HEROS of today's modern and digital news times. Even the Supreme Court Justices of the United States went against the White House administration and just re-approved journalists' right to free speech and questioning. Hooray! Long live the 1st Amendment! The current President for some odd and no explainable reason chooses to trash and disrespect honest, diligently working media journalists. Why does the president make obnoxious efforts to downgrade journalism and the 1st Amendment? Neither Bush president whined about the Press. Maybe it is because Number #45 himself can't write. His "Art of the Deal" book was ghost-written. Check out the ghostwriter, Mr. Tony Schwartz's Twitter feed . He negatively rails on Trump constantly. That's not a good sign when your pseudo biographer and book writer in charge of learning about your life and putti...

I personally just returned from a full week's Thanksgiving vacation in Las Vegas, Nevada. The gambling, tourist, strip mecca of the United States of America. According to a fifteen-year plus Las Vegas resident and my own true blood cousin, she described the city as "half-price" California. Geographically and climate-wise, I would agree with her.  During my fall visit, the outside weather in Vegas was very sunny, crisp, and welcoming. For a desert land, the city averages just 4 inches of rain per year, it was splendid. The daily temperatures ranged from a low in the Fahrenheit '40s to a high in the '60s. My visiting air mattress and futon bed residence for the week was in the northwest Las Vegas suburbs. I spent pretty much an entire week living with a kind and nurturing family in suburbia. This suburbia to its credit was very clean, flat, simple to navigate and calm. Las Vegas's Suburbia is perhaps the same as any other clean suburb in America ...

The monotony, repetitions, and sameness of life, can become quite obvious. The same morning ritual, the same place of residence, and similar work, sleep patterns can often occur. Are the doldrum periods of time in one's life something to fear or to be embraced? I think the doldrums in life can be viewed equally in regards to positivity or negativity. Are you a person who enjoys a comfortable lifestyle pattern? For example, my awesome, nurturing, caring fantastic mother is a person who enjoys the sedentary, nesting and domestic simple joys in life. My mother's happiness seems to be derived from such ordinary tasks as taking care of her home, gardening her front and back yards while being a caring and attentive grandmother. My mother has never been a loud partier, ambitious world traveler, or society bucking activist. My mom is an ideal example of a person who fondly embraces the calm, conservative and domestic lifestyle. She is a loving grandma who understand...