by Christine Whitmarsh

Created on: September 28, 2008

What is the value of creativity in a failing economy?

With each drunken daily dive of the stock market, arguments that the economy remains strong beneath it all grow ominously silent. Even the most resolutely optimistic economic experts are now sitting in an overwhelming cone of silence and self-doubt with tapping fingers and furrowed brows.

Regardless of whether you agree more with the doomsday crowd or with the finger tapping skeptics, it's easy to agree with one indisputable piece of evidence: something is happening to the financial foundation of our country and it's not good.

Trying financial times like these remind me of the classic lifeboat story (no, not the one with the pope and Raquel Welch). The basic premise, no matter how it's told is that some type of global catastrophe has happened and a number of survivors of various vocations are trapped in the last remaining lifeboat. There are only enough resources remaining for a certain number of people to survive and of course there is one too many survivors. The group is forced to decide who to jettison. In all these stories, doctors seem to fare the best and they can't dump the lawyer and tax collector overboard fast enough.

Assuming we continue on this turbulent economic course, I can't help but see the national business marketplace as that lifeboat. The exception, of course, would be the lawyers. When people drown in the ocean they reach for life preservers. When businesses sink, they reach for lawyers (or now, the federal government). Although we can still safely evict the tax collector from the boat, especially in light of the new tax bills they will unfortunately be tasked with delivering door to door next year.

Following this logic, and based on my profession as a writer, I'm thinking I'd better either become Michael Phelps real fast or pull a MacGyver and learn to perform surgery with shoelaces and a pen knife. In economic end times like these, I seem to have found myself in a group perceived as even lower than tax collectors on the lifeboat survival priority list.

As a professional writer, I am disturbingly aware that my position in the corporate food chain is a precarious one. I hate to break any hearts, but here are some others whom I count as my compatriots in this dilemma: painters, dancers, sculptors, singers, actors, website and graphic designers, photographers, and all the other folks not directly related to keeping clients' and consumers' lights turned on, kids clothed and food on the table.

During

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