Putting off the inevitable is the usual way to make things look better than they really are. This is done as long as it is possible without making people feel suspicious, though in their hearts they really know and fear that what seems to be happening is really happening. At this very minute.

Take the recession, for example.

Everyone here in Europe knows that the economy has been slowly but surely failing for the last couple of years. But no one wants to admit it. It's like if you give in and end up talking about ghosts and goblins they will certainly come out at night to haunt you. Haunt you for good or for worse.

So you better be careful, or else.

What I am getting at is the following. This morning I woke up and took a long and relaxing shower, nice and hot. Then, after surreptitiously drying myself off in routine fashion, I meandered downstairs for a quick breakfast bite. As the usual traditional approach demands, I then threw open the newspaper, the Dutch one called "de Volkskrant." Even though in my heart I would have preferred not to do that.

Over there, in the bottom right corner, in the form of a small nonchalant article trying not to overexpose itself (in fear of economic ghosts and goblins coming out at night, of course), the recession was made official.

In fact, the article even started that way. Something to the effect that "the government has announced that it is now official that there is a recession" and so forth and so forth until the article ended abruptly before it was actually meant to end. Alert minds like myself notice things like that.

I finished chewing off my bite of breakfast, swallowed real hard, and meandered my way back up the stairs. Time to return to my lush and expansive office suite in our attic which is really just our bedroom and my laptop in disguise.

This afternoon I will go to the Banen- en Opleidingsmanifestatie Gouda to see if there is anything to be had for the future. Don't get my hopes up, but that is no reason to stop being optimistic about things. Although I am a still a so-called startup entrepreneur in the lucrative world of e-business, officially I am what they call a "baanzoekende zonder werk."