This is me rambling about being afraid for my town. My town is like Jaws. Tell me about your home?

Yesterday I was feeling pretty icky. I was shaky and achy and all of my muscles felt like they had taken a beating, on top of me being nauseated and having a headache all day. I still stuck it out at school, though. Well, until the last class. I went home right before last block because it’s only anatomy and all she does is hand out worksheets, so it’s not like I was missing much.

I’m ten times better today, though!

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So okay, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the paper comes out that’s solely for Williamsburg, which if any of you have studied American history, you’ll recognize it a huge historical town and pretty much the foundation of America. Anyways, the newspaper keeps talking about how our tourist numbers are dropping by the hundreds (almost to thousands) every year and this scares me!

Okay, so have any of you read Jaws or at least seen the movie? If you have or haven’t, I’ll make this comparison. Amity Island is a major summer-beachy-rich-person-ish tourist spot. The tourism industry is pretty much the Island’s only source of income, besides the few fishermen. In the winter time, they suffer financially because no one goes to their island, so they thrive off of the summer crowds. This is why when someone cries ‘shark!’, they panic because scaring off the tourists rips them of their money they need to survive the winter.

My home in Williamsburg is like this. Yeah, we have other sources of making money—we have industries around, like power companies, beer companies, plus the College of William and Mary, just to name a few, but tourism makes up at least 80% of the money in our town.

When we lose this money, we can see it all around town. One of the biggest, oldest hotels in the Hampton Roads District (an Omni) is up for auction, many, many hotels are foreclosing, businesses are closing, and our family-owned restaurants.

I feel like I’m starting to ramble, and I know I could go on and on forever about this, but it just sucks, because I love my home and I’m so proud of this place, but to know that it’s hurting because people don’t share my interest or don’t have the money themselves to come see me, it makes me sad.

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My best friend is going for a job interview today, and she’s all panicky and doesn’t know what to do and how she should answer certain questions, so last night I was trying to help her, but she would just wave off my suggestions and blow me off.

I hope she just remembers who has a job after getting hired on the spot when asking for an application and which one of us has been unsuccessful multiple times in her couple-month-long job search.

And to add to the above segment, I work at a shop that’s geared toward tourists D:

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So, Mibba, tell me about your home town or the town you live in now?