Maybe I’m stuck in my own little media bubble, or maybe mandem just ain’t outside like that… but its looking like life’s getting properly untenable for more n more. Out here in my little corner of Ford Nation it’s not always obvious at first glance but you see it if you’re paying attention. Bus stops. Timmies parking lots. Walmart aisles. You see it in the driveway too… diesel compensation trucks just sitting there, going nowhere.

Mandem Dayv don’t even make eye contact with Metro or Loblaws anymore. Starsky’s and PAT? Special occasions only. Found myself in Giant Tiger the other day for fair price coffee, even clocked some produce that might be worth a second look.

Even if you’ve done everything they told you, put your nose to the grindstone in school, crossed your t’s, dotted your i’s, minded your p’s and q’s like a good yute, most still come out the other side and it’s crickets. You try to cover all your bases, leave no stone unturned, check all the boxes like you’re ticking off some invisible checklist… and still can’t land nothing that pays proper. Just bare circling, tryna nail down something stable that never seems to lock in.

Then man start chatting like it’s a you problem.
“Get your ducks in a row.”
“Button it up.”
“Square everything away.”
“Tie up your loose ends.”

Like life’s just some admin ting you forgot to finish and that’s why doors aren’t opening.

Then the tone shifts.

“Get your act together.”
“Buckle down.”
“Shape up or ship out.”

Man telling you dig in your heels, take the bull by the horns, stand on your own two feet… sink or swim. All dressed up like motivation, but really it’s just a polite way of saying you’re on your own.

So what does it even mean to “make something of yourself” right now? What are you rising to? An occasion that’s already been patterned, where a small set of people eat and everyone else just gets told to go back to school, try harder, and firm it?

At some point you clock it proper… it’s not that people are lazy. It’s not that man didn’t try. It’s that even when you do everything right, it still might not buss.

And the older generation love to tell it like they had it harder. Like it was just grit and discipline that carried them through. But they came up in a time where money was actually moving… spent across the board in ways they don’t even clock now because it felt normal. Then a certain slice of them had surplus and leveraged it. They invested, compounded, and started demanding more – more productivity, more efficiency, more nimbleness – from everyone else.

And yeah, you can chase efficiency and still look after people. But that’s not what happened. When the mandate is year-on-year growth, what you’re really mandating is year-on-year pressure. Year-on-year squeeze. Quiet little cuts to dignity that stack up over time.

That snowball’s been rolling for decades. What we’re dealing with now isn’t a mystery! It’s the result. And in 2026, the group with real surplus to leverage is so small we’ve got a word for them: oligarchs.

So now man’s talking about “individual responsibility” like that’s the answer. But all that sink-or-swim talk ignores the obvious. People were never meant to do this alone.

Many hands make light work. People used to pull together more, shoulder to shoulder, sharing the load. Governments – federal down to municipal – moving in the same direction, singing from the same hymn sheet. Fewer people left to drown.

We need systems that actually step in when it’s peak and ease off when it’s not. Not this constant pressure setting where everything’s maxed out all the time.

I don’t know where things are heading for me or my daughter. But one thing’s clear. If we don’t start pulling together, nothing good is coming for the rest of us just trying to cross the road.