By Kate Herzig, JJ and David Heller
Sung by JJ Heller

I have unanswered prayers
I have trouble I wish wasn’t there
And I have asked a thousand ways
That you would take my pain away
You would take my pain away

I am trying to understand
How to walk this weary land
Make straight the paths that crooked lie
Oh Lord, before these feet of mine
Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

When my world is shaking, heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave your hands

When you walked upon the earth
You healed the broken, lost and hurt
I know you hate to see me cry
One day you will set all things right
Yeah, one day you will set all things right

When my world is shaking, heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave your hands

Your hands that shaped the world
Are holding me
They hold me still

“Your Hands” is song #10:

And of selling houses and moving.

After much consideration, prayer, and advice, I have made the hard decision to sell my condo in Virginia and, for the time being, move in with my parents in Wisconsin. Two weeks from tonight I will be sleeping in my folks’ guest bed.

Why? Several reasons.

The web design job market has opened up a little in recent months, but not enough. I have interviewed and sent resumes, but when I have received word back, it has been “thanks, but no thanks.” In one case, I was one of 12 interviewees for a local job that had been posted on Craigslist for less than a week. (I don’t know how many resumes they received overall, but I’m sure it was more than the 12 they called back.)

In the meantime, I have exhausted my unemployment benefits (including the extension for which I was eligible) and am currently paying my bills by the grace of my parents.

This was a difficult decision partly because there’s no obvious right or wrong answer. Whether I stay or leave, the choice requires me to give up some things while gaining others.

On the plus side, as long as I have the relative freedom to do so, I plan on pursuing the art of stained glass. I will be taking 4-6 weeks to focus on the craft on my own time as well as applying to the workshops in SE Wisconsin. I may end up with a new career!

I will probably still be doing some web design on the side. If I decide to return to web design fulltime, I would like to refocus with some classes in human computer interaction. This will bring me up to speed on the latest developments (like mobile apps) as well as support my personal interest in usability and information architecture.

The web job market in Chicago seems fairly healthy, so I won’t be without options. (Frankly, the web job market here is rotten; D.C. has the majority of openings in this region.)

On the down side, I am leaving a lot of friends behind and leaving an area which has been home for nearly ten years (not counting college at ODU).

Obviously, I’ll miss both friends from college and friends I’ve found along the way at work and church. I’ll also miss things like early spring daffodils and gorgeous sunsets.

On the other hand, I will be close to my parents. I’ve had plans in the back of my mind to move closer to them “someday.” I guess “someday” is “now.” I’ll also be near my best friend from high school, who has always lamented that my visits are never long enough. I will be glad to be more involved in the lives of her and her family. Both she and her husband are art school graduates, and just being in their house makes me feel more creative. I know they will be a big support as I try out the stained glass art form.

Oh, and I’ll have access to cheese curds any time I want. Yum!

So that’s my big news. Lots of loose ends to tie up in the next week and a half — not the least of which is visiting as many folks as I can (with camera in tow) for my “final tour.”

Here’s to the next great adventure!

No Rational Exuberance – Op-Ed by George F. Will

Today’s unemployment rate is 10 percent; the underemployment rate—the unemployed, plus those employed part time, plus those discouraged persons who have stopped looking for jobs—is 17.3 percent. Almost 40 percent of the unemployed have been so for seven months or more.

….With prolonged high unemployment predicted, consumer spending is paralyzed by caution. With Washington experiencing prolonged hyperkinesis, businesspeople are paralyzed by uncertainty about what the rules and costs of commerce are going to be. What would a cap-and-trade carbon-control regime do to energy costs? What will be the costs of whatever the Environmental Protection Agency decides to do on the basis of its “endangerment” finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant? What will health-care and tax costs be?

….There is excess capacity in office space (in Manhattan, square footage equivalent to 920 football fields, according to The New York Times), malls, apartments (5 million are vacant), and in shipping, etc. But the economy, dependent on government-manufactured demand, is like an athlete on performance-enhancing drugs. Writing in Barron’s, Vitaliy Katsenelson compares the economy to an injured athlete who takes steroids in order to keep competing. They exaggerate the athlete’s recovery and mask the pain, but require steady doses and produce dependency.

The 1990s were the stock market’s best decade since the Depression; the 2000s were the worst. The 2010s? Today, talk about a “new normal” often includes gloomy references to Japan’s “lost decade” and a possible American future of protracted slow growth.

The administration, however, projects deficits three times larger than the post-1945 norm, interest rates less than one half the norm, yet growth 10 percent higher than in the booming 1980s. That is irrational exuberance. But nowadays there is no other kind.

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