That’s a question that has been troubling me for a while now. It might be a question that’s troubling you, too.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last month, the economy of the U.S. has completely melted down. The stock market went into a complete free fall, familiar institutions began going under left and right, and the government was forced to take extraordinary action. It’s clearly not business as usual.

It’s also terrifying me to the depths of my soul.

I have a weird fascination with horror movies. I’m drawn to them, but when I actually sit down and watch one, I can’t look at the screen. I end up either throwing my hand up over my eyes and looking through a crack between two fingers or turning my head so I can only see the action through the corner of my eye.

Suddenly, reading the news has become just like watching a horror film.

I start up Firefox and surf over to The New York Times or The London Times and without even realizing it, the hand comes flying up and I’m reading the page between two fingers.

It doesn’t help matters that the nature of my job dictates that I have to take all this in. I have no choice: In order to be informed I have to read every article talking about how we might be on the verge of a depression, every column which raises the specter of soup lines, every crazy rant about how the U.S. has become the Soviet Union circa 1991.

The punch line to all this, of course, is that we’re technically not even in a recession yet. Har-dee-har-har.

Part of my problem is I’m a natural pessimist. My father cursed me with the ability to see the worst in everything. So every time I read a story about the horrible nature of the economy, I see the world crashing down around me. I can’t even read a story about the Dow Jones industrial average gaining 900 points without wondering if it simply means it’ll crash even harder the next day.

My co-workers have begun exploiting this gift by coming to me and asking me what the doomsday scenario will be. I oblige the request and begin spinning stories about a world right out of “Mad Max” or “Dark Angel.”

Before I know it, I’ve depressed even myself. Because I have to take all the news in, I can’t turn to my natural coping mechanism: Denial.

Thus, I’ve been forced to turn to distractions to keep my spirits up. My recent midterms did a great job by forcing me to focus on something else, but I’m not sure they helped my mood, as dreams of academic ruin simply replaced those of economic ruin. Unfortunately, I’ve finished off my first round of midterms and now the economic nightmares have returned full force.

Thankfully, the good folks at Bethesda Softworks will soon pick up the slack, as they release the highly anticipated game “Fallout 3.” Hopefully the post-apocalyptic world of Vault Boy will drown out the real potential apocalypse we’re facing. At least Vault Boy’s apocalypse is funnier.

Now, it’s possible all this is troubling me far more than it should be. That might be because of past experiences.

I hate to admit it, but I’m old enough to distinctly remember the recession that gripped the U.S. in the early ’90s.

I remember my family fulfilling the cliché by gathering around the table and talking about what financial sacrifices could be made to help ride out the storm. I remember seeing the hint of fear in my parents’ eyes, and I remember the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that accompanied it. Luckily, my family got through that period without too much harm.

Despite the economic difficulties Michigan has been experiencing for a while now, I’m sure there’s plenty of students reading this column who have had no real experience with what’s probably coming up.

That’s not to say that things will get worse for everybody. It’s entirely possible that your life will continue on its merry little course, with little regard to the world around it.

The thing is that you just never know, and you need to be prepared for anything.

That’s the one benefit of being a pessimist: You’ll always be pleasantly surprised.

James Harrison is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at harri310@msu.edu.