Wednesday, November 8, 2017

The Gales of November

I am not terribly enamored with the month of my birth. It's a time of darkening, when the evening light doesn't so much fade as it just disappears. It's also often cloudy and when it's not, the angle of the light at the right time of day can feel blinding. I get my worst headaches in November, and they are from being in the car around 4:00pm on sunny days when there's no escaping that light. 

So it should not surprise me terribly that November is typically the month where a bad job or work situation suddenly goes sour.

In 2009, Brian (then just a boyfriend) was in an organization that did lots of field organizing for environmental issues, but paired that work with lots of door-to-door begging for funds.  If you live in a college town, chances are you've seen them out prowling in your own neighborhood. The begging for funds was more important than the policy work.  The pay was abysmal.  He called from Minneapolis (where they had sent him with the other poor souls to beg) and said he quit.  He didn't even say good-bye to the people he was staying with.  There were a few true believers in that crowd, and he really didn't want to hear it. That was November 14th, I think. 

In 2012 I took a job as an independent contractor for a Farm-to-School program that was funded by the CDC.  I mention the "independent contractor" part because the woman who hired me did not know what that actually meant, and towards the end of that miserable and confusing time, told me she wasn't going to sign any contract with me and that status was just so she didn't have to deal with paying my taxes. Wrong answer.  Highlights of that job included this woman accusing me and the grant liaison of conspiring against her when she couldn't answer questions about the community group who wrote the grant and sponsored the program...because she had made up the community group.  It should not surprise you that it took me months after I quit to get paid.  November 19th, four days before Thanksgiving.  

My husband is leaving his current position at the start of 2018.  He put in his notice yesterday.  He doesn't have a job lined up for after and, frankly, at the moment we could care less.  His currently employer has a reputation for high turnover.  Most people average about two years there. He's been there seven. 

The stakes are a little different now than they were back in 2009 and 2012.  I'm grateful we don't have a mortgage to worry about.  One of the benefits of graduating college in 2008 is that I'm fairly skittish about the housing market, and will probably remain so for the rest of my life. But we do have the kid now, and with him comes worries about insurance and keeping the rent paid and all those other things that come along with adulthood.

We aren't worried, not yet at least.  His job has been such a source of stress that the prospect of finding something new seems like a relief. We have been talking seriously the past few months about shaking things up. The age old questions of "What are we doing and what is this work for?" have been nagging at us. 

I have a feeling we're going to field a bunch of "But what about Reed?!" questions from the family, as if we weren't thinking about him with the future in mind. My answer is fairly simple: he deserves a dad who isn't stressed out because his employers thinks they pay him enough to erase the work/life balance. 

I've been anticipating this change coming for some time, so the news wasn't terribly surprising. I'm still chewing on the reality of it. When you're 31, seven years seems like it's been your whole life.  It's not, but it's the only one we've known since 2010. We'll see where we go from here. 

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