FWP

A million or so years ago, I worked with a brilliantly talented woman when we were both enlisted broadcasters in the USAF and working in Germany at the American Forces Network, Europe. She had a sign on her desk that always helped me stay centered, as it read, "I am now starving to death on the salary I once dreamed of making." 

As I learned again and again throughout my working years, that was and will always be painfully true. Our appetites increase geometrically while our compensations are usually more arithmetic and therein lies the problem and challenge.

There's a meme floating around on the Internet about someone struggling because the recharging cord for their iPhone is only three feet long. That's regarded as a poster for FWP, First World Problems.

Sort of like 'all I have for bottled water is Evian as we ran out of Fuji yesterday,' when as a kid we drank from the hose in the backyard during the heat of summer (and while also walking through three-foot-tall snowdrifts uphill, both ways, on our way to school).

I should be concerned rather than merely amused by a news story like this, but I remember Thoreau's, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," and realize, I, like many of them, yearn for the scratch to be able to afford a bell to put on that bicycle.
-bill kenny