Budaeli

It’s not about the music. It’s not about the clothes.

It’s all about the bridge.

Saturday Night Fever should have been a throwaway movie about a fad. Instead it uses the disco scene as a backdrop to the universal story of someone trying to escape to something better. Tony Manero is stuck in a place where his parents have one vision of what he should be (like his older brother, a priest who ends up leaving the clergy, well on his own path) while finding happiness only when he’s dancing and no way to translate his drive for that into other parts of his life. He has friends who are racist, misogynist, and homophobic – though I suspect that comes from their frustration of being locked in by a perceived lack of opportunities. That’s certainly the case for Tony – he wants something more than a job at a paint store and living with his parents. Enter the bridge.

Tales of yearning play a major role in American culture. Ever since the days when someone actually had the ability to move out West and start over with a clean slate and make something of themselves, we’ve been raised that everyone has the opportunity to be successful. To Americans, there will always be an open West waiting for those with the determination to exploit its riches.

In Saturday Night Fever, the West is Manhattan and the journey is the bridges crossing the East River. Tony understands this almost before he is consciously aware of it. There is a scene where he effortlessly recites trivia about the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge* as if he’s been quietly saving up whatever knowledge might be needed for the day he crosses a bridge and moves onto a new life. He knows he has to leave, and it takes a certain tiredness, and a girl, for him to go.

My life doesn’t even come close to paralleling that of anything represented in Saturday Night Fever, except for the urge to leave home. Even if I can’t say I’ve accomplished anything significant yet, the act of leaving Iowa and coming to Boston was one of the most important events in my life and was necessary for my own personal journey.

I had to cross the bridge.

There are plenty of other interesting things about the movie, and I suggest you read Roger Ebert’s original review and his revisit for the addition to his Great Movies list.

Other interesting things to note:

• This film came out in 1977, a crazy year for New York City. A heat wave, a crime wave, Son of Sam, a blackout, and a World Series. For a first-hand account, I highly recommend Michele’s (aka @abigvictory) tale of her experience that summer. She also has a great story about being on the rock side of the Disco wars.
• The much-parodied opening sequence of Tony walking down the street is exactly how you introduce a character like Tony in a movie- we learn that he’s always showing off his good looks and style, is really trying to use the moves to pick up women, yet he works at a paint store.
• Also, we’ve all done that walk. Feel free to use any music, but “Stayin’ Alive” is always the best choice for strutting down the street.

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*This is a bridge that goes to Staten Island and not Manhattan, which makes no sense in the context of the movie. The only reason I can think that it was used for the shot was because it’s a nice shot and is the same bridge used in several other scenes.

There really is a gaydar. The mistake that everyone makes though is that clues to a person’s sexuality can be gleaned from the way a person walks or talks or what clothes they wear.* Using those visual cues works only for those who are a part of the gay subculture. The home of musicals, dance music, and fashion consciousness infused with effiminancy and a non-sexual love of women. It was a place where gays could belong without being as harshly judged by bigots, and as a identity with which to find other gays. That culture is slowly going away as a distinct group, and that’s a good thing.

A distinct gay culture is an anachronism today. We’re living in the beginning of an age of marriage equality, where government accepts and provides support for one of the most common social constructs among humans, long-term monogamous relationships. There have always been heterosexuals who never had a problem with their gay brothers and sisters, but it’s increasingly becoming more acceptable to be openly and vocally supportive for their rights.

Some will lament this subculture’s passing, especially those who grew up to identify closely with it. However groups like this should be based around common interests and beliefs, not sexual orientation. If this subculture morphs into something that less aligned with a perceived gay lifestyle, it has a more legitimate reason to exist. This is already happening, with the unintended consequence of straight people having their sexuality questioned just because they like musicals or dance music or have a flair for design.

What this really means is that gays are becoming a more tolerated and even celebrated part of the greater society. The voices of hatred for those who are different is being drowned out by reason and tolerance. The most visible representation of this change is the counter-protests to the Westboro Baptist Church.

There still needs to be support systems for people coming to terms with their sexuality, but the need to belong to a specific social group is no longer necessary. It’s a good time to be gay and not want to fit any old-fashioned stereotypes.

And now for some random pieces of gay cultural history I’m itching to share (and they provide some extra perspective):

Judy Garland had a large gay following not just because she was a great singer, but the pain that she felt could be heard in her singing and she was a voice for the unhappiness most repressed gays felt.** Most of the effiminacy of gays from the 40s through the 60s can be attributed to gay portrayals in movies*** – gays could only appear as comedic elements or heavily coded to pass the censors. For a boy growing up in a small town with few visible role models, the movies were often the only way for many to find their identity.

Twentieth century gay subculture was defined by several important events: the Pansy Craze of the late 20s and 30s, World War II (it was the first time many gays discovered there were others like them, and the subsequent conservatism following the war brought invigorated repression), the political activism of the 60s and 70s, and the AIDS epidemic of the 80s. A set of slang, symbols, and philosophy of life developed that created a unified gay identity. This was crucial because of the cruel way American society treated gays and lesbians during the period; by having such a group to belong, it created a tremendous support system for a group of people trying to shake off the commonly-held belief that their sexuality meant there was something wrong with them. It was also an identity to align with, one that accepted people openly and judged more on their actions than expectations.

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*So how does the gaydar really work? It comes down to non-verbal cues like where someone’s wandering eyes follow or facial expressions in relation to certain topics discussed, as well as verbal cues – the most obvious is the ‘pronoun game’ but there are others like an absence of certain topics (like chasing girls). Of course the easiest way to tell if someone is gay is to ask them and they give a straight answer (no pun intended) or you see them having sex with someone of the same sex, like yourself.

**If you haven’t heard any of Judy Garland’s later recordings, I suggest you check out Judy at Carnegie Hall or any of her later recordings of “Over the Rainbow” – the heartbreak is so strong it never fails to get me teary-eyed.

***For an overview of portrayal of gays and lesbians in movies, check out the great documentary Celluloid Closet.

There is something about remembering a joke or telling a carefully crafted tale, that my mind mangles and the result is either I am perceived as a bad storyteller, or I wind up with a new creation only vaguely related to the original concept. On occasion, I’ll recite a poorly-remembered quote or joke or song or whatever I felt worth committing to memory for the purpose sharing: the result is better than the original. The more common result is a joke with no punchline, a story with no outcome or piece of interest to the listener, or singing that has little resemblance to anything recognizable to anyone else but my own.

What I suspect is happening: whatever thought is committed to memory is only added in fragments, often only the most interesting or most unique bits. When retold, my mind fills in the blanks the same way it might take care of a blind spot on the eye. Then it just comes out of my mouth (if I write the thought down I have more time to better fill in the holes or do the research necessary). 

I have tried to either fix this malfunction or find a way to use it to my advantage. One major hindrance is the tangled methods my memory associates things. Tangents come easy to me because I link memories in an arbitrary fashion. The way the sunlight looks through a window may remind me of a song I heard that was tinged with melancholy, or the way someone talks about a movie triggers some story I want to tell about some crazy person I saw on the street. Neither of which has an obvious connection to the trigger.

Also, I lack the skill of attribution. Unless the source is built into the thought or is from someone or something which I consciously try to remember (such as a friend or favorite artist), there’s little hope that any of that information will be remembered.

To change how I think is nearly impossible and filled with unforeseen consequences. I accept who I have become and think that any attempt to consciously change who you are, especially when it’s a skill or trait that runs deep, is always the worse choice. This is the biggest flaw of any self-help advice on living one’s life.*

Which leaves making an inability to re-tell stories an advantage. One way is to write fiction. I’m finishing and posting stories that are built from the half-remembered ideas that clog my memories. But that project is hindered by another of my hang-ups: self-doubt. But self-doubt is often disarmed when met with action. My first reaction to an upcoming new experience is fear, which usually goes away immediately after the event has begun.

Perhaps self-doubt is what this post is really about.

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*My rule for any self-help books is that if it’s younger than 100 years then it’s not worth reading. A good judge of great work is time, and when it comes to advice on how to live one’s life, the longevity of an idea is very important. I may talk about this in a later post.

Awhile back I sorted through my YouTube descriptions and found a user that made unique and moderately-disturbing-but-in-a-good-way videos had recently uploaded two new videos.

The artist has really grown in skill since his earliest creations. Both videos were amazing in that they both had great video concepts and appealing music – but terrible lyrics. Bad enough that I won’t share the artist’s identity.

One track in particular sounded like a hit record complete with hooks and well-composed music, and the video had interesting special effects and a music video quality story line (quite an accomplishment for being entirely filmed in a finished basement). But the song: the song had a commendable subject, but the vocabulary of a fourteen year old boy (I’m not talking about swear words, but the word choices were limited). The artist is eighteen.

The extreme unevenness of the artist’s work presents a confusing situation for me. I enjoy finding new things and promoting them to others – it’s important to pass along new and interesting works of art because why carry the burden of not having given an idea or an artist the chance to flourish? The artist has huge potential – I can see him pulling off a full act of music, style, and vision in the same tradition as David Bowie, Madonna, and others who carefully constructed an iconic personality and style.

However the artist still needs time to develop. He needs to make more music and videos and work on his lyrics and his presentation. With a few years of work he could be as big of a cultural force as Lady GaGa currently commands.

Yet he’s out there on YouTube and MySpace (and even Twitter) distributing his work to others. Hundreds of thousands of people have been exposed to his half-baked work – when even ten years ago the exposure would be limited to small audiences at local establishments, limiting the impact of the poor work upon whatever he may create later in his career. The localized nature of the exposure limited the impact of any bad work, and it kept a larger audience from reacting negatively to works produced during the developmental phase of an artist’s development.

Perhaps this isn’t an issue at all.

History tends to remember the victors and forget the rest. When it comes to art and entertainment, this trend is reinforced by the relative high cost of production and distribution of works. A writer needed to get published by someone who has invested in a printing press and distribution methods to get any amount of exposure. Musicians needed a business to make, promote, and sell records; filmmakers still need financial backers and distributors to get their works seen. This is no longer a problem. With the internet, the barrier to entry is so low that anyone can publish their works online – this blog stands as an example.

Maybe it’s not too terrible to expose mediocre works to large audiences. The larger the feedback group, the greater chance to improve and become better. And if the artist starts out mediocre but develops into something worth keeping, the only audience for the lesser works would be hardcore fans and archivists.

This means that I can justify sharing with you the artist in question…but I won’t; if he gets better and no one still isn’t noticing, I may become his manager and profit off of my discovery! The real reason is that my tolerance for quality is not shared by many others, and my preference is to back a recommendation that I enjoy much more than the best work of this artist.

Here’s what I’ll do: if my ‘discovery’ makes something that doesn’t have any glaring deficiencies, he’ll get lots of free promotion from me. Persons who have the potential to create something great need just as much promotion as established artists – we aren’t starving for content, but there is a lack of substantial quality in today’s art and entertainment*.

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*This is worth a separate post.

When I began Budaeli a little over three years ago, the original plan was to use the site as a vehicle for my fiction writing. Today, over at fiction.budaeli.com – I’m finally opening up my stories to everyone. The first story is up and while I make no claims to the quality, now anyone can read my work.

How Budaeli Fiction works

Comments are enabled on every new story for discussion and constructive criticism. Comments will be moderated for relevancy, but I want to leave an opening for readers to tell me what they like and don’t like about the works, or to discuss aspects of the stories and writing. Over time stories may be revised and if they reach a state where I don’t want to work on them any more, they’ll be retired to a permanent page on the site. All works will be published with a liberal copyright adapted from a Creative Commons license because I don’t want to artificially limit the distribution of any of my ideas because they could be improved upon by more creative people.

Oh right. The title of this post needs an explanation.

Over the years that I’ve been writing, I’ve only shown one or two pieces to other people. And for a long time I never bothered to finish anything I started (this was a problem for a lot of other projects, and is a recurring theme in my life). About a month ago I was laid off and suddenly had lots of free time, so I devoted part of that time to getting back into writing and launching a site specifically for my fiction.

This time the problem wasn’t procrastination so much as a fear of failure and a perfection complex. Over the last several weeks I’ve accrued about a dozen great starts and no completed stories. But today I stopped worrying about whether my writing was good or not or whether the story was interesting or not and just wrote out a vignette published it. I finished the site design and layout for Budaeli Fiction weeks ago but it was useless without content.

By ‘not giving a fuck’ I’m settling with a state of my writing that is complete enough to be presentable. I may not be a good writer, I’m probably a terrible writer at fiction – but I won’t let my misgivings hold back any work from being published. However, I accept responsibility for anything published with my name, meaning it will be authentic and adherent to my personality and beliefs.

There is a chance that I’m a terrible writer of fiction. If, after a decent attempt at writing fiction, the stories are as horrible as they are right now, Budaeli Fiction will shut down and I’ll find something else with which to spend my time.

The first story is a vignette, “Only Once”. Let me know what you think in the comments or contact me at correspondence at budaeli dot com.

Note: since Budaeli Fiction has been shut down, links to the short story and the copyright page have been changed to the current versions on this site.

I work in the marketing profession. That means I try to stay on top of the latest trends that marketers are using. Keeping abreast of things like email marketing, social media marketing, Twitter marketing, etc.

Almost all of it is bullshit. Thinly-veiled fads. In reality, we don’t really know what makes products and services sell, we can just convince people to buy part of the time. And what may work one day will be ignored by consumers the next.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

There’s a lot of people starting blogs and signing up on social sites who aren’t there to connect with their friends. These people are there to sell stuff and try to make money. It’s only inevitable that consultants are hawking Facebook as the next great sales tool.

As a result, those of us marketers who write and blog about marketing are getting in on the whole business by giving ‘advice’ on how to take advantage of social marketing. It’s just like moving to California in the 1840s and selling groceries or liquor instead of mining for gold: in the end you’ll be the one making the money.

Here’s what they’re saying:

• Create a blog that focuses on a single topic, preferably in your field of expertise.
• Create accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and ‘friend’ other people in your profession.
• Use Twitter to sell yourself.
• And other silly rules

Please don’t listen to them. You’ll turn all of those tools into chores and it won’t be fun or interesting at all.

Instead, think of the reason blogs and social sites were created: to communicate with other people.

If I were to follow the advice of my fellow marketeers, Budaeli would be writing about marketing and workplace culture, my Twitter account would be hawking my posts and my employer’s products, and I’d connect with every sleazy marketer on LinkedIn – while my posts and tweets on technology, music, movies, and gay rights would be relegated to separate blogs. “Oh no,” they’d say, “you can still talk about those topics, but you should concentrate them – more people will read your work.”

Bollocks, I say. This blog still exists because of the fun I get from occasionally writing on whatever interests me – and it’s all interesting, so I’ll write about every little subject area that worth writing about. Since having separate blogs, or just writing about a single topic is unappealing and so goddamn boring to me that I won’t do it. Hell, if I want to diss people in the same field of work I’m in, I won’t be stopped.

All I’m going to worry about is not doing anything that will get misconstrued or doesn’t represent who I really am.

What this means to you:

Do what feels right to you, personally. If you shine with a 140-character limit, but can’t form complete thoughts in much larger blocks, stick to Twitter. Even if you’re not that great with Twitter but you’re comfortable with the limit, there you go. Perhaps you are more compelling when speaking: start a podcast.

Just don’t compromise.

There’s a good argument for movies being the king of all forms of entertainment. There’s visuals, audio, stories and characters, and it all has to come together or the whole thing flops. No other form of expression has that: you’ve either got the words, or the sound, or the image. In a movie, you have it all. And unlike theater, the whole thing is preserved for posterity.

I have a pretty good idea of what makes a good movie, one that’s worth seeing a second time. Sure, my tastes are different than the next person. But to understand your own likes, it’s good to understand what other people prefer in movies.

My first favorite movies were science fiction and fantasy. I first obsessed over The Wizard of Oz, then the first Batman movie. I even marveled at 2001: A Space Odyssey before my voice changed. In high school, a friend made a list of movies for me to see, movies like Fight Club, The Big Lebowski, and The Producers – the good stuff. That list showed me movies that weren’t just fun to watch, they were of high quality. Then came Roger Ebert.

If you want an education of why some movies resonate better than others, read Ebert’s reviews. Everything I know about film I learned from reading his work. He also has a list of what he thinks are great movies. It isn’t what he thinks are the greatest films – there’s no such thing – but what he thinks are the best made that he’s seen. That means movies that are well made, but also movies he loves. La Dolce Vita is a mirror for his life, and Herzog’s metaphorical epics mirror his convictions, etc*. Citizen Kane, Solyaris, and the like are on his list – but they’re on every list of great movies. The reason why they’re there, and what everyone forgets is that at one time people were entertained by them, not just forced to watch them in film class.

Just because a movie is on one of these lists doesn’t mean it’s worth watching. So must we watch them? Yes.

Movies, good ones, are just like great literature, great music, or great theater: they reflect who we are and show us the truth in all its myriad contradictory explanations. Just like in Rashomon, where four descriptions of the same crime are wildly divergent. Every one is true. So a good shortcut in learning to live a full life is to be able to understand these art forms to learn from others who once lived what they learned about existence.

…this, of course, is a lofty ambition. In all honesty, I watch movies because it’s fun. I enjoy being wrapped in a story that requires more than one sensory input and has multiple parts to analyze. And by ‘fun’, I don’t just mean watching comedies. Think of ‘fun’ as wanting to watch the whole movie to find out how everything ends. Fun is working out why a character is acting the way they are. Fun is trying to guess why something happened and what might happen next, and being surprised when it turns out differently.

Stop watching movies if you aren’t having fun. Just because movie critics watch the entire movie (sometimes they don’t) doesn’t mean you have to – don’t think you have to finish Solyaris because is considered a great movie. I’m not quite sure how I finished it myself!

Finally, what makes a good movie.

This isn’t a list that I print out and check off for every movie I watch. Rather this is what I’ve gathered from the movies I’ve seen and why I liked one and didn’t like the other. Here’s what usually exists in a movie that I’d want to see more than once:

1. The movie is fun. (See above for what I mean by fun.) This rule trumps all others. If I’m bored or not wanting to pay attention, it isn’t worth the effort.
2. The characters behave like they really do in life. It’s not that the characters are behaving rationally (nobody does in real life anyway), but that there’s a cause-and-effect to what they do in the movie. This is easier to catch than to describe. If more than one character is doing or saying something that’s making you roll your eyes, especially if you’re by yourself, then something’s wrong. This also goes for characters that aren’t human or even alive: in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, New York is the main character, and she plays the part beautifully – I’ve never wanted to go anywhere after watching a movie as badly as I wanted to visit New York after seeing that movie.
3. The movie accomplishes what it sets out to present. Not every movie has a plot, or necessarily about humans, but every movie has a motive behind its creation. Maybe the movie is trying to show how a teenager thinks as he is working out his place in the world (Wild Tigers I Have Known), perhaps a movie is about man’s place in nature (Koyaanisqatsi), or maybe the film’s creator just wants to screw with his audience (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie). Did the movie make its point? Of the three I mentioned, only Koyaanisqatsi failed. Or take my favorite example: Big Trouble in Little China - the movie’s purpose is only to be quoted and referenced with your friends, and it accomplishes that superbly.
4. “Three great scenes and no bad ones.” Howard Hawks said that, but don’t take it literally. I think of it as, “If you can’t remember anything bad about it, then it works.”

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*If I’m mistaken, I apologize. I don’t really know him**.
**Only Roger Ebert is being mentioned as a movie critic because my tastes align more often with his reviews than any other critic. Exceptions include Fight Club and Solyaris.
*** An example of this in music is Michael Jackson’s Thriller - there are five lame, sappy songs on the album, but the other four are so good, it doesn’t matter.

Quick economics lesson on “opportunity cost.” This is quite possibly the most important, and most practical economic concept to understand. If you can grasp this and plan your life with it, you’re 80% of the way to understanding economics. And possibly have a more fulfilling life.

Opportunity cost is: what you give up to get something else. Every single thing we all have access to is limited: your time and money are the most important and the greatest limiting factors, but distance and accessible space are also important and very constrained. So you have to decide what to give up in order to do the things you need and want.

Time is the ultimate limited resource. You only have 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year, and then one day you’ll die. You need to sleep, so there’s 6-8 hours every day that’s given up – but you can sleep less to get more time in the day. But is it worth it? Also, you can have more money than anyone else, but you’re still constrained by how much time you have. Time can be spent, but it can’t be saved.

In exchange for working 40 hours a week, you get money from your employer – so you gave up your time to get money. That money can then be given up for other things like rent, utilities, groceries, drinking, etc. But you have to decide what’s important – do you save for a long-wanted vacation in Europe, or do you go to the bars every night?

Opportunity cost doesn’t just affect how you live your life, it also affects everything else. If we let the government spend its resources on bailing out large corporations and people with bad mortgages, that means less for responsible businesses and citizens who were smart and didn’t overextend themselves. A teacher must choose to spend time helping a single struggling student, or to teach the entire class and help more people who need less specific help.

This is a very simple concept and very logical, but most of the time there isn’t any overt warning signs that we’re allocating our resources incorrectly. That means it’s important to analyze the opportunity cost in every decision we make – OK, that’s hard to do and not always practical (or fun), but at least the most important decisions. My suggestion is to first figure out what you really want in life and what you can give up, and second analyze any decisions you make in whatever you do to earn money. Notice I didn’t say ‘job’ – because earning money is one of the most time-consuming activities, a good use of that time should be doing something that you enjoy and are happy to be doing.

So, what are you going to give up?

There is absolutely no reason for there to be a debate over gay marriage. This isn’t like abortion where the life of an unborn child is at stake*. This is about living in a land of freedoms open to all the citizens of America.

Christians have no right whatsoever to be against two women or two men who love each other to join together in holy matrimony. If you worship God and try to follow the teachings of Jesus, he would not be happy with your treatment of your fellow brothers and sisters; he would be sad because you have a choice to treat others as you want to be treated.

This is not just a religious thing, we must all treat others fairly. We live in a country founded by people who were pissed off because they were treated like children and given no rights. And when we grew up as a country and confronted our own hypocritical treatment of ethnic and racial minorities, we took it upon ourselves to be accepting of everyone.

When I moved to Massachusetts over three years ago, it wasn’t because I suddenly gained the right to marry whoever I wanted. But I don’t want it any other way; at least all loving adults are treated the same by law here. It should be that way anywhere else in the United States.

On Tuesday, California’s citizens will be voting to keep the rights given to them by courts earlier this year. Even though most of us don’t live there, we need them to have the right of open marriage for everyone. Why? Because the more states that are in step with the rights granted us by the Declaration of Independence, the more that will follow. We all have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – that’s for everyone. In the end we’re all humans, and we’re all in this together.

Growing up in Iowa, I tried hard to surround myself with people who accepted me for who I am. People who I could tell that I was gay, and nothing would change. But there were always people who weren’t so accepting, because they didn’t know how to deal with it, or they were taught to hate. They may have treated me badly, but I forgive them. Acceptance takes time.

The treatment I received gave me a complex. I felt I had to bury my identity it to almost everyone for fear that things would change and I’d be treated differently. You had to either have known me for a long time, or be gay yourself to gain access to the knowledge. But fuck it. It’ll take time to be open but I’m not hiding anymore. You have no reason to hate me for being gay. You can hate me for not liking your favorite band or thinking you’re a prick, but you can’t hate me for something I have no control over.

It may be different for me because some day I may want to marry another man, but we all must stick up for each others rights. Boston is so diverse that nearly everyone I know is a minority of some sort. And it would hurt me for them to be treated differently. Some of their ancestors were unjustly persecuted and denied their rights, and I won’t let that happen again. It’s the same thing, though – do you really think we should be selective in treatment of law-abiding people who aren’t trying to hurt others? No.

Eight years of bigoted conservatism is more than enough.

It’s time for America to walk the walk.

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I guess this post was about more than just gay marriage. Surprise!

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*I was taught that as a man I have no say over abortion. It’s not my choice and never will be. Women are the only ones to make a decision on abortion, so I’m keeping my mouth shut!

Think of the recent volatility in the markets as an opportunity.

When the economy shrinks it’s really only resetting itself, getting rid of excess capacity. Because eventually the market will be up again. And while credit may be hard to get right now, there’s capital still sitting around wanting to be used: your labor is capital.

This is the perfect time to start a new business. You’ll have to be thrifty and thoughtful, but that makes good business sense even in a growth market. Scrape together some money with your friends and come up with a business plan to solve a problem. Trust me, when people are back to spending money again you’ll be well-positioned to make some real dough. Here in America, we may not have a physical frontier anymore where people can just pack up and get away from their past and start a new life, but being an entrepreneur is the next best thing: you can pack up and leave your past career and be in total control of your own destiny.

Hell, even buying a franchise is a good idea. Then you can buy a business model that’s already been worked out and get started now so that when people are no longer spooked by thoughts of a recession, you’ll be ready. I work for a franchising company that was started in the recession of 1990-91. The founders managed to build a successful, stable company – and people are still buying franchises.

Yet another option is going to work for a startup. New companies are starting all the time and they need good, cheap help. By going with a company at the beginning, you’ll be well positioned to get a payoff if you help make a successful company.

Keep in mind that recessions happen because people think there’s a recession. It’s all in your head.