(Don't) Ask the Experts

I have been asked by all of my clients recently: When do you think this market will turn around?

I don't know, I have to admit.

So I do what I always do if I don't know the answer to something - I try and find it. I've looked into it. I've read up on what so many of the experts have to say. I actually think I'm being driven crazy by all the differing opinions.

A client pointed out that I'm doing much the same with my baby. The question my husband and I keep asking is: When do you think Sugar Bear will learn to sleep on his own? Some advocate letting him cry it out, others say that attachment parenting and co-sleeping are best. I actually think I'm being driven crazy by all the differing opinions.

The more I read up on both issues - housing market and the sleep training - the more I realize that it's impossible to predict the outcome until we look at it in hindsight. At this point, the experts know about as much as I do. Someone may be an expert in the sense that they have a lot of experience in a field, but really what they say is just an opinion. Nobody really knows what's going to happen with certainty and I'm kind of tired of the "my opinion is right" attitude of those experts. Am I the only one who sees this in a whole lotta shades of grey?

There are many who predict a turnaround in 2009. There are those who say my baby can sleep through the night at 5 months old. There are those who are more pessimistic and think we have several more years of falling housing prices, and that my baby won't be able to sleep through the night until he's closer to a year.

Even the inner circle at Forbes can't agree on when the market will recover, or at least stop bottoming out. They even seemed to have an opinion about babies sleep habits. Huh. Didn't see that coming.

Time is the ultimate expert. It will be time that tells which expert was right about the housing market and how the Bear will learn to sleep. I think instead of putting much stock in what any of these experts have to say, I need to just look at it as interesting information. Let's just all try not to worry so much. It gets us nowhere. (by "all" I mean "me, when I let it get to me.")

In the end, until we get through this time and can look back on it, everyone else is just guessing. It may be a very educated guess, but it's still a guess.

~Amy