When I was 25 years old, I was too busy to write letters that go viral

My first house. 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 860 sq ft in Prineville, Ore.  Bought it for $58,500. 

Perhaps you've seen the news recently about the latest crisis that has gone viral. No, it has nothing to do with our presidential election -- I am telling you, in a nation of 330 million people it will forever boggle my mind that these are the "best" we have to offer -- the price of oil, Syria, Isis, the refugee crisis, or anything else.

Nope. The latest crisis to go viral is the 25-year-old Bay Area woman who wrote a letter to her boss at Yelp complaining about her circumstances. It's all over the news, has come up in discussions at home, work and elsewhere and it highlights what appears to be a generational mindset gap.

Talia Jane wrote the letter to her CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, and rather predictably she was fired that day. In the letter, she complains about her pay, her grocery situation and her rent, among other things. For example, she's living in an apartment that costs $1,254 a month.

Two things, real quickly. I've never lived in a house with a mortgage that high and maybe, just maybe, look to cut costs with a roommate? Okay, three things. Maybe work and live somewhere else with lower cost-of-living expenses? Just some thoughts...

Just to be clear, no one is making her work for Yelp, live in one of the most expensive places in the country and, most importantly, write a letter on social media that goes viral and gets her fired. Those are all choices she has made. Now she's living with them.

Talia Jane, I don't know what to tell you other than typically when we make choices there are these things called consequences. They go together. You'll figure this out soon enough I reckon. Maybe you have already.

In response to Talia Jane, another Millennial by the name of Stefanie Williams wrote an open letter to her that also went viral. She doesn't mince words and basically tells Talia Jane to buck up, get a job or two and do smart things like have roommates to cut costs. She shares her story of being down on her luck and bucking up and working hard and now things are good.

It's all a bunch of drama that is so unnecessary. I think that's my big takeaway. The advent of social media means everyone's problems can now be everyone else's. It's not that we didn't have problems back in the day, it's just that they were typically contained to small circles. The way it should be.

I do remember back when I was 25. Vaguely. That was 1994. I was living in Prineville, Ore., in a two-bedroom, one bath house with four roommates and a mortgage of around $400. Okay, so my four roommates were Julie, Brenton, Taylor and Ethan. A loaf of bread cost $1.59. The average income was $37,000 (Full disclosure: I was nowhere even close to that and was probably pulling down around $18,000 a year.) and a gallon of gas was $1.09.

In addition to working at a newspaper I would occasionally pump gas at a gas station for some extra bucks. I also occasionally did landscaping work and even made a few bucks as a professional runner. I recall having the mindset of trying to improve my writing skills and attaining other work-related objectives in hopes of achieving "professional advancement" and increasing my income the old-fashioned way: hard work.

I didn't post my issues on Facebook. Or write a blog post on Medium that goes viral. Or ask people to support me by launching a personal PayPal account.

Maybe you can relate.

Here's a major difference between the Talia Janes of the world and those of us who look back on our days when things were pretty hard. I mean, we didn't have much, finances were tight -- not much has changed there actually -- and there were plenty of struggles. Sound familiar?

Those memories make me smile. Those struggles and how we handled them and the faith we had that God is in control and we could trust His plan are vital to who we are today. The struggle drove us and pushed us. Struggles are central to our faith. They are central to who we are. Embrace them.

Working At Home: Mr. Mom

I've worked at home since 1993. Back in the stone age of working remotely, I believe it was just after Al Gore invented the Internet, I was working in my bedroom of our 860-square-foot house in Prineville, Ore. I was a newspaper reporter for The Bulletin and every morning around 7 a.m. my wakeup call was my editor. We were an afternoon daily and our deadline was in the morning so I'd wake up to my phone ringing, roll out of bed, clear my voice and practice saying hello a few times so my voice wouldn't crack when I answered the phone and start my day. To give you an idea how long ago that was, it was back when we only had three little boys.

From The Bulletin, to The Oregonian as a correspondent in Corvallis, Ore., to the Daily Press as a bureau reporter in Gloucester, Va., through seven houses and one barn (the barn is another blog post ... or two or three) I've been working at home. I've seen it all. And done it all. I've interviewed people while changing diapers. It's kind of hard to take notes and, well, wipe bottoms, but you pick your spots and learn to drag out conversation while you're finishing you're duty and then get back to note taking when things are all cleaned up. I've cooked dinner while working, filed stories in between innings of Wiffle ball games and worked most days in casual Friday attire. Well, maybe even more casual unless you go to work in your pajamas.

I had flashbacks of 23 years of working at home today when I was in several hours worth of Skype phone calls. Typically I mute the audio to cut down on the background noise that's easily manufactured by a dozen or so kids inhabiting a 1,570-square-foot home. We had a heat index topping 100 degrees outside and the kids stayed inside mostly, but they were great. Midway through the afternoon Julie went to a local hospital to visit a friend who just had a baby -- with my blessing -- and so it was me and the kids and my Skype call with my boss. Now God bless our kids. They've learned to tiptoe around Dad when he's on the phone in conversation and the older ones try and keep the younger ones in check. There's been some interesting moments, such as the time I was talking to the District Attorney in Prineville about a criminal case I was covering. It was a really small 2-bedroom house we lived in and one of my kids was having a monster fit and emitting rather bloodcurdling screams and the D.A. casually inquired if there might in fact be a crime of child abuse being committed that very minute within the confines of my house. He was joking. I think.

If you work at home enough, there comes that moment -- sometimes frequently -- when in the interest of keeping peace you do something that proves to be regrettable. All parents face the moment of truth in varying stages, I guess, whether you are working at home, riding in the car, out in public, or even within the private confines of your house. It's that moment of weakness or weariness parents are all too familiar with when you know you shouldn't, but in the interest of sanity, general peacefulness, or to get your kid to pipe down, you give in to their demands. That moment occurred this afternoon when 18-month-old Seth wanted the Chapstik he eyed near my desk. I knew I shouldn't, I knew it would be trouble, but he was getting noisier and I couldn't distract him and I was trying to Skype ... and I caved.

He grabbed the Chapstik and toddled off while I resumed my conversation. When he returned several minutes later, let's just say he wasn't going to struggle with any chapped lips, or anything else for that matter. No chapped lips, no chapped cheeks, no chapped hair, hands or arms. I have no idea how that much Chapstik could be contained within one little tube. The dude was totally lubed up.

But here's the thing. Seth very well may be the caboose of the Sabo tribe. This may be the last Chapstik incident in Sabo children history. There will come a day, perhaps soon, when I will miss those days when Seth walked around looking like a cute little tube of cherry Chapstik.