We can speculate endlessly and become discouraged with the mixed messages we get on the economy. Is it double dipping or just in a slow recovery? Depending on what you read, you can come to almost any conclusion you want. The confusion comes from the fact that there is no one truth. With all the information at our fingertips, we're drawing from a vast wealth of conflicting data. Some sectors and regions and companies are up, others are down. But taken as a whole, we find a truth. For each of us that truth is a bit different because we're all in different situations. I have kids and a mortgage and can't dash to Oklahoma for an IT opportunity, like my single twenty-something cube-mate. I'm in applications. He's a DBA. We may read the same news story very differently. The information overload is unique to our time and job search. Would the pioneers have traveled from Missouri to California if they saw how difficult it was in Google Maps? What if Yahoo Answers' Best Answer was to "stay put?" Would there have been a gold rush if we read the discouraging blog posts by the early 49ers? Maybe future generations will find a way to sort all this stuff, but we're left to swim through it as we develop our career strategies. What's most important is to take my truth and make it work for me. I'm not going to try any less to seek employment with a great company due to discouraging news. I've lost jobs in a great economy and a bad economy and I tried equally hard to regain my footing no matter how discouraging the news. -- Dino Londis