A Light on the Horizon

My regular checking of the headlines since Tuesday finally paid off Saturday morning. The major news outlets reported that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had clinched Pennsylvania and therefore had 273 electoral college votes and an assured victory in the Presidential election. Soon after, celebrations broke out in the streets around the country and the world. Trump was golfing, but would later respond with several feverish tweets condemning the results and swearing to fight them in court.

I know for myself that it was a weight off my shoulders that I had just become accustomed to over the last four years. I think much of America and the world felt the same. Of course, there are 70 million voters out there who didn’t get the result they wanted and I have a pretty good idea of how they are feeling as well. The President and Vice President Elect’s speeches were about reconciliation and a vision for the future, a healing of our country, and reunification of Americans after four contentious years. It’s going to be a bumpy road at times, but things will get better. They must.

Our democracy and the values held by most Americans had suffered such a blow and we often wondered would we ever see our country as the founders framed it, would we ever again become a beacon of freedom and hope for the downtrodden? I woke today feeling that it was possible once again.

The held breath before the drop...

It’s Election Day here in the US. The hope is that in twelve-ish or so hours we’ll have a new president-elect due to an overwhelming margin of victory. That’s the hope. The expectation is that we won’t be fortunate enough to get an overwhelming margin of victory and Trump will claim voter fraud and any number of other falsehoods if he isn’t declared the winner. There’s a chance the election won’t be settled for days, weeks, or even months. There’s also the chance that even with an overwhelming margin of victory by Biden that Trump will claim voter fraud, election tampering, etc. Some of us would like to think he might finally eat some humble pie, but why would he at this point? He never has before from what I know. It will be what it will be. I only hope that there isn’t an outright attempt to ignore the will of the people, because who knows what will happen to our society in the aftermath. Large scale demonstrations and riots are likely to erupt if Trump tries to subvert an election in which he’s the clear loser. Justifiably so, but I still worry for our democracy.

On to some marginally better news - I finally got someone in HR that’s responding to my request for help with my retirement savings and it appears they will submit a transaction to correct the mistake. Hopefully within the next few weeks I’ll find out my TSP account has been switched to separated, and if desired I’d have access to those funds. At present, I have no plans to touch them for another six years since I’ll be assessed an early withdrawal fee before then. As mentioned earlier, the plan is to return to full time with Berklee, and hopefully by the time I have used up the rest of my GI Bill benefits, a trickle of work would have come available by then. There are a lot of ifs in that planning, especially considering that currently the COVID pandemic has come back with a vengeance, and appears to be setting new records of morbidity and mortality. It’s tarnished the luster of returning to work in the near term a bit.

We may just continue to tread water until it seems we’re on the far end of the pandemic, which could be a year from now or even longer. I have around $20k in my deployment related TSP account, which should take less of a tax hit if I needed to make a withdrawal for an acute need. Hopefully the housing allowance from the GI Bill will be enough to keep us in the black for the next year or until I get some amount of recurring work again. All that said and even with the election misgivings, we’re feeling a bit more stable now and are settling in to the present new normal. We’ll see how long it holds.