Today I went out to get some more gas bottles, oxygen and acetylene, but I couldn't get them as I need to pay cash up front now. I've already paid 140 bucks up front to Air Liquide for the rental of cylinders for a year, which is quite good (and about 1/3 of what BOC charges) but now I have to pay cash up front for whats in the bottles to the agent... because Air Liquide doesn't do bottles on account from it's yard anymore.
When I started this welding lark way back in the early 80's, after learning how to do so on a course set up by the Dole office, it was just a matter of going to NZIG and signing up for an account then walking away with the bottles.Now everythings up front and in advance which makes me think of the gradual changes in society since I started off as a young man with dreams of being a valid part of the whole thing.
Way back then the feeling was, and the reality, that those who were already setup could help those who weren't setup yet. The biggies didn't get further ahead by changing up front all the starters but were willing to hang back slightly to allow the newbies to find their feet. That's all changed now.
Now if you want to do anything it's all cash up front, and sometimes far in advance (take the IRD who require you to pay tax in advance even before you've earned the money, for self employed people anyways), so this speaks to me of the changes whereby no longer do the big guys have a little leeway for the new generation but are so in hock themselves that they require those starting to help the powers that be balance the books.
If we advance this notion far enough along it'd most probably get to the stage where couples who decide to have kids are credit checked as too whether they'll have the earning power to support the kid. Sounds silly doesn't it but with prestigious schools overseas having waiting lists and parents putting them on them when the kids aren't even able to speak yet then the ramifications are somewhat obvious.
Imagine if you will a time where kids learn to speak and understand whats around them and the first thing they are told is that they are already mortgaged... It'll all happen eventually unless the greed that is so prevalent abates and people realise it just ain't practical to mortgage a world in advance when all money is is confidence in motion. I can see how this state of affairs has arisen but it makes absolutely no sense to keep it going to its inevitable conclusion.
I don't know what the answer is but I do know that mistakes, like the one I made recently, are getting riskier and riskier to make simply because you can afford to get back up again. This has happened to me a coupla other times in the past; first it was the stock market crash of '87 and I was a little over extended (took me about two years to pay off the debt I owed) and then in '97 when I freaked out when I was earning loads of money... for almost doing nothing. That also took about two years to get over and I hope this particular crash of mine isn't going to take two years to get going again.
Because I have crashed. Maybe not completely, there is a little more credit I can tap into, but it's definitely got to touch and go whereby if I get a little more credit but can't manage to sell what I make then I'll just have to fold up and bring it all back home again. At the moment I need about 3 and half hundred to get some big bottles of gas and with that I could generate several thousand dollars worth of sellable stuff. The thing that makes it a gamble, well more so than usually, is that people just don't seem to be spending as much as they used to... especially on big ticket items like extravagant hand made furniture and artworks. I've always got lots of options (you can't be an artist from the working class who's white without having lots) but the two main ones are carry on regardless and just pull in the risk factors so I don't leave myself too out on a limb and two; except that the worlds going completely stupid real fast and just get back home and just do a little here and there to keep myself in the essentials. I've got so much stuff stashed here at home I could easily keep myself occupied just being busy at home but, and this is the big butt, where the ass hits the pavement, I do believe that what I have to say, with my artworks, deserves to be heard... and seen, of course.
For an artist, I'm hoping, it always actually comes back to this. Art is not something I do because I can but is something that is done because I'm me! It's what I do and what I was made to do. The world can go round in circles trying to find the meaning of life, and using up all the resources to do so, but I already know what the meaning of life is... basically it's all about what gives it meaning... and that means doing what your meant to do!
panic'd grab at all to push back the tides that will wash away their castles made of sand.
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