Last night, Mr. Fox and I watched a documentary special on HBO called “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island.”

It was a really eye-opening documentary, and it made me realize that I take life for granted a lot.

Starting in summer 2010, when many hoped an era of recovery would begin, and continuing through the holiday season six months later, HARD TIMES: LOST ON LONG ISLAND spotlights the challenges facing highly skilled, well-educated Long Islanders who lost their jobs. Public relations professional Anne Strauss notes, “Being unemployed for two years is not just a financial loss. It’s an emotional loss. It’s a loss of friendships. People disappear. You can’t socialize. It changes every facet of your life.”

There are millions of people in our country that have it much worse off than we do. It’s a hard thing to think about really. I couldn’t imagine life if Mr. Fox and I weren’t in the percentage of people that are not struggling through daily life. Well, I mean, we have our struggles, but we are fortunate to not have a mortgage payment or a car payment to worry about, which makes things easier. Seeing others struggling to stay afloat with things like 6-month past due mortgages and foreclosures and indefinite unemployment makes me sad that there isn’t much we can do, as a country.

I think that, if you have access to HBO, that you watch this documentary. It’ll really make you think.

hbo documentary long island unemployment foreclosure struggle

Tweet