Marching Along

 Greetings!

We're cruising along through the first quarter of the year, and let me say, it has been a doozy for the world over. Everything that I've invested myself in as far as a career, hobby/entertainment, and any personal interests, have seemingly taken an uppercut from uncertainty and left me rudderless at sea. Do I care to explain? Sure.

    Like many creative types I grew up inside of my imagination and projected what I saw in my head out into the world but either actively daydreaming or writing/videoing/capturing the stories or plots that played out uninterrupted. As a kid, I never envisioned turning my imagination into a business or monetizing it, because, well, I was a kid. Why would I? After a series of ups and downs over the years (I.E. see life) I've circled back to my passions and am still enjoying them as a hobby, but have been making strides to also profiting off of my unpaid work. Here's where it gets complicated: The want or need or desire to have original and genuinely creative works is making way to a lackluster emphasis on excess and immediacy... Why take days, months, or even years, when you can have an AI do the job for a fraction of the cost? Ultimately, lot of consumers don't care where their content comes from, as long as it still arrives. I'm part of the problem: I acknowledge that I still eat meat, and honestly love doing so. It's kind of a lateral comparison, but it still holds. If we can't get the majority to agree on animal rights, I don't think we'll be able to agree on creative protections.

    On the flip side, I work in the hospitality industry in Las Vegas, Nevada. I work quite successfully at a restaurant that has been seeing the same corporate slip in standards over the last few years; cheaper food, cheaper methods of execution, same inflated salary for their CEO. It's almost impossible to find an accurate figure on how much the CEO of my company makes (it isn't Starbucks money, that's for damn sure). There is evidence that supports that it's probably in the $150k a year range, which seems obscenely low, since the Starbucks guy is pulling $54 million (yeah, get rid of that guy). My small example though holds weight across the board for all companies: I have yet to see a company that reduces the wages of its uppermanagement in order to help bolster the bottom line, I.E. more shifts or pay increase. There's 25,000 employees at my restaurant worldwide. You could literally reduce the salaries of the executives by just a couple thousand a year and lift the hourly minimum for the bottom employees. (No, I'm not even talking about me. I'm a server and make my money generally from great service and also entertaining my tables.) Right now my restaurant is being used as an example of a "great place to work at if you need a second or third job." I wouldn't be proud of that statement.

    So where do we go from here? No idea guys. If you have the answer though, I'm all ears.