(Podcast coming soon)
Just haven't had time to put it together and wanted to get this out here.
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🧠Opening Reflection:
Reflection: DX
I like to say I’m a founding member of DeGeneration X. Not because I’m a degenerate, but because we were the first generation to feel the drift of the Middle Class — what I now call the Shrinking Center.
Sorry Boomers, but you’re from a different planet. There’s an innate lack of critical thought and situational awareness in a good majority of you. The pandemic proved it a thousand times over. I’m not trying to start a riot or rekindle your Woodstock marches. But it has to be said: your generation’s leadership brought the Shrinking Center into being. NAFTA. WTO. The dot-com speculation bubble. The Financial Crisis of 2008. You were the bull in the China shop generation. You broke it. We were left to sweep it up.
I’m a chef by trade, but also a technologist. I can build, fix, and rewire almost anything with computers and electronics. I stay way out in front with AI and push myself to learn something new every day. That drive keeps me restless. I feel guilty if I’m not doing something. I took care of my grandparents until they passed. I took care of my mother until she passed. I do care about people, even if I come across standoffish. That’s because of how many times I’ve been misunderstood, written off, or treated as expendable.
I’m a product of death, divorce, loneliness, and being sold out. And I’ll be honest: that weighs on me.
I did what I was told to do. I went to school. I got the Finance degree — the supposed ticket to stability and respect. That ticket turned out to be worthless. Instead of doors opening, I found myself stuck in dead-end kitchens. You don’t need me to spell out the details. Picture the place where people work while everyone else goes out to have a good time. That’s where I ended up — long hours, low respect, no way out — while others “played.”
That was the core of my frustration. The disrespect of being trapped in work I didn’t love, feeling taken advantage of while my years were slipping away. I didn’t get to live or enjoy a normal life. I had the skill, but the way it was used wrecked the years that should have been my most productive.
That’s not just my story. That’s the story of my generation. Gen-X was told to play by the rules, but the rules were already being dismantled. We were told to trust the ladders, but they’d already been pulled up. We were told to work hard, and we did — harder than most. But the rewards never came.
Instead, we became outsiders. Not by choice, but by betrayal. We watched the Boomers cash out on cheap mortgages and guaranteed pensions while they offshored our jobs and deregulated the economy. They built their lives on stability and then burned the bridge behind them. They told us to trust in the same system they were gutting.
So yes, I am the Creative Gen-Xer. I’ve juggled tech and kitchens, caregiving and hustling, surviving on adaptability and restless drive. But what it feels like is this: we’ve been forced to live the life of outsiders inside our own country. And the insult on top of injury is being labeled slackers, when the truth is we’ve carried more weight with less reward than the generations before or after us.
This reflection isn’t nostalgia. I don’t want the old world back. It’s gone. What I want is recognition: that Gen-X got betrayed. That we were the founding members of DeGeneration X because the middle started to vanish under our feet. And that the Boomers, for all their slogans and movements, were the ones swinging the wrecking ball.
We didn’t choose to be outsiders. We were forced into it. And we’re still here, still standing, still remembering.
Fortune Cookie Says: The map they gave you was a lie; walking it still made you stronger.
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📤This Week:
(Monday) - The Foothills Corridor: Chapter 8 - Why Foresight Matters in Forgotten Places - 9/1/25 - Foresight isn’t a luxury in the Foothills Corridor—it’s survival. Chapter 8 explores why long-term thinking matters most in forgotten places, where short-term fixes have drained resilience and delayed renewal. From signal-tracking to scenario planning, foresight is the hinge between decline and reinvention.
(Tuesday) - Dear Rachel – Episode 5: Clocked In, Clocked Out - 9/2/25 - Last week, Norman “The Normie” Harcourt told listeners that life is
wonderful if you just work harder, plan smarter, and invest wisely. This
week, callers push back with stories from the unstable edges of the
modern economy—where grit alone isn’t enough.
(Thursday) - Factions of Self-Preservation 1: The Cost of Control - 9/4/25 - Catawba County and the broader Foothills region are mired in a quiet
turf war — not over policy, but over power. This lead article in the Factions of Self-Preservation
series exposes how duplicated systems, administrative silos, and
ego-based governance waste tax dollars and block needed reform. When
institutions prioritize control over collaboration, the public loses.
(Friday) - The Foothills Corridor: Chapter 9 - Separating Hope from Noise - 9/5/25 - In Chapter 9 of The Foothills Corridor, we confront the discipline of discernment. Rural regions like the Foothills can’t afford empty gestures or civic theater. This chapter shows how to filter hype from true signals—choosing what deserves energy, investment, and momentum. Hope is not a feeling; it is a choice.
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⭐ Feature Story ⭐
Holding the Middle: Defining Hickory’s Shrinking Center
When I talk about “The Shrinking Center,” I’m not reaching for some abstract theory. I’m naming what people here feel in their bones: the middle that once held our towns together is thinning. Not gone, not beyond saving—but no longer something we can take for granted.
We’ve already met some of its faces through the archetype series we introduced. The Laid-Off Millworker who gave thirty years and got three minutes’ notice. The Forgotten Graduate who did everything right and still ended up bagging groceries. The Grandmother Who Stayed, keeping her house as the last stable landmark on a block where most everyone is now strangers. These aren’t just profiles. They’re signals. They tell us what has been lost, what remains fragile, and what still might be rebuilt.
This week, I want to step back and explain what this series is trying to do. We’re going to look at the Shrinking Center not only as a collection of stories, but as a system—economic, cultural, and political—that shapes the lives of the people who call places like Hickory home.
This Week’s Feature Story
The phrase “Shrinking Center” describes the slow erosion of the space where stability used to live. Economically, it’s the middle-class job. Culturally, it’s the shared spaces where memory and identity were reinforced. Politically, it’s the willingness to compromise and plan for more than the next election.
In Hickory, this erosion was sharp. Between 2000 and 2009, the region lost more than 40,000 manufacturing jobs. Whole sectors—furniture, textiles, hosiery—collapsed. Unemployment spiked over 15 percent during the Great Recession. The Laid-Off Millworker represents this collapse: loyal, skilled, but discarded without ceremony.
Recovery came, but it was uneven. Fiber optics provided a new industrial anchor. Companies like CommScope and Corning now produce nearly 40 percent of America’s cable. Yet this recovery didn’t restore the old middle. The new economy runs leaner, more automated. Wages haven’t kept pace with costs. That’s where the Modern Worker lives—piecing together shifts, side gigs, and contracts in a system that offers no ladder to climb.
At the same time, Hickory’s cultural commons have frayed. Churches attendance is way down. Libraries have struggled with the advent of the digital age. The local newspaper has been outsourced. Families have been scattered. What holds a community together when the institutions of memory fade? For some, it is The Grandmother Who Stayed, a quiet anchor who keeps Sunday dinner alive and reminds younger generations of their roots. For others, it is only The Ghost, the lingering absence of a world that once promised stability and order.
The Shrinking Center is also political. Decisions were not made in some distant capital alone—they were made here. The Outsourced Executive who signed the memo but stayed in town. The Property Developer who quietly acquired half the block, profiting in both decline and revival. Power did not vanish; it shifted into fewer hands, often with less accountability.
And then there are the human consequences. The Evicted Tenant who worked, paid rent, and played by the rules—but still got pushed out. Her wages never kept pace, because employers kept filling jobs with lower-paid immigrant labor, undercutting both pay and experience. She wasn’t a failure. She was priced out of her own life by a system designed to extract rather than sustain. The Addicted, who started with a back injury and a prescription bottle and now lives under a label instead of support. These are not side stories. They are the cost of allowing the center to shrink unchecked.
Yet even here, there are threads of renewal. The Young Returner comes home not out of failure but because of family roots. He sees possibility in land, in community, in memory. His choice embodies the question at the heart of Hickory’s Shrinking Center: will this remain a place people leave behind, or can it become a place people choose to rebuild?
The Shrinking Center is not just about decline. It is about the tension between fractures and resilience. It is about whether new anchors—fiber optics, civic renovation, return migration—can generate circulation strong enough to support a broad middle, or whether opportunity will remain concentrated in a few hands while the rest survive on the margins.
This series will explore those dynamics—how economics, culture, and politics interact to shape who gets to stay, who gets pushed out, and who finds a foothold in what remains.
This Matters
The archetypes matter because they remind us that none of this is abstract. Communities like ours are not just numbers on a chart. So many people are struggling to piece things together and hoping to build towards something better.
So many Extractors have taken value out of this place and the people who stayed are living with the mess they left in their wake. People like The Witness—the lower working-class person, many times a minority, remember what others would rather forget. These people couldn’t afford to leave. It’s about impossible to uproot yourself and move to a Metropolitan area if you don’t have the funds. So many of these archetypes are warnings and they are also lessons to learn from.
The Shrinking Center is fragile, but it is not finished. What happens next depends on whether we keep ignoring the signals, or whether we finally decide that the people in the middle are worth fighting for.
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"The Shrinking Center” captures how Hickory, NC and similar towns have seen their middle erode—economically, culturally, and politically. This four-week News & Views series will expand on earlier archetypes, connecting data, lived experience, and civic stakes. Each week explores one lens of decline, with the final installment pointing toward renewal.
Week 1 — Socioeconomic: Working but
Struggling
Hickory lost roughly 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2009, and
median household income now sits about 25 percent below the national average. Service
work and gig labor have replaced stability, while housing affordability is
pressured by retirees and remote workers. Archetypes such as the
Laid-Off Millworker, the Modern Worker, and the
Forgotten Graduate show the paycheck problem in human terms.
Week 2 — Cultural: Losing Our Commons
Cultural anchors are fragmenting. The Hickory Daily Record prints only three
days a week. Historic landmarks like the 1859 Café are gone. Institutions such
as the SALT Block or symphony remain but attract segmented audiences. Without
shared commons, civic memory weakens. The Grandmother Who Stayed, the
Ghost, and the Immigrant illustrate what
happens when cultural identity erodes.
Week 3 — Political: Fragmented Power
Local governance is marked by duplication, zoning exclusion, and reactive
planning. Yet the 2014 $40 million bond—leveraging $846 million in private
investment—shows what coordinated strategy can achieve. Still, turf wars and
defensive mindsets dominate. The Outsourced Executive, the
Property Developer, and the Institutional Lifer
personify a system that circulates but rarely steers.
Week 4 — Steering Toward Better Outcomes
The final feature synthesizes the three lenses. Risks include youth
outmigration, housing pressure, and over-reliance on fiber optics. Cross-dynamic
levers—housing policy, workforce alignment, and broadband as
infrastructure—offer possible routes forward. Archetypes such as the
Evicted Tenant, the Witness, and the
Young Returner frame the choice: allow fracture to deepen, or
rebuild a center that holds.
This series builds a layered civic narrative: paycheck, memory, power, and future. It challenges Hickory to reckon with fragility and imagine a better course.
