The company I used to work for has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This means that I get a lot of notices in the mail these days (I’m considered a “creditor,” since they didn’t pay me the last two months I worked there). I also got a FedEx package the other day with about five pounds of legal documents. I feel bad for my former boss and the other founders, but would rather just be rid of the whole ugly mess. The daily collection calls (since my name was on the company bank account) are pretty awesome too.
Another disappointment: summer registration for library school. Due to funding cuts (it’s a state school, I should’ve seen this coming) there were a ridiculously small amount of classes offered this summer, and I was only able to register for one. I’ve been pretty balls-to-the-wall with graduate school so far, and I had planned to take three classes this summer. Instead, I’ll be paying eight hundred or so odd dollars* for three credits, and it means that there’s no way I’ll graduate by August 2010, unless I take on a ridiculous course load for the next three semesters.
To sum up: I don’t have a job, and the thing I’m doing *instead* of working (i.e. SCHOOL) is kind of falling through this summer as well. If I wasn’t committed to going to Montana this summer for at least three weeks, I’d consider braving the job market, but there’s probably nothing available anyway. I guess it’s time for some ’self-directed’ activities and education this summer – i.e. reading blogs, hanging around the house feeling poor, and making occasional bank-breaking trips to Target.
*Um, make that $1370 for one class. I forgot about all the bullshit fees like childcare and transportation and other things I will never benefit from. You can take up to six credits (i.e. two classes) for $1370, whereas more than six credits will cost you around $2500. Ugh, money.
Holy crap, I got paid for the first time in two months. Though I was on vacation for two weeks in January, I figure my job still owes me two paychecks from December, though it’s kinda hard to bring this up when it seems like it was such a struggle to get payroll processed for this round, but… If it’s gonna be another two months, I want my $$$$.
I’ve also learned that co-workers who are asking for ‘emergency funds’ to tide them over between phantom paychecks are getting them. Ask and ye shall receive. It’s time to start asking while there’s still money left. Give me ma monay!!!
Since returning from my month away, I’ve started work again (half time, as has been mandated since October), and begun grad school in Library & Information Science. Work is nearly non-existent. We haven’t been paid the last two pay periods, and will probably miss a third. I’m also waiting on a $300 expense check for stuff I bought for the company ages ago.
Many of my friends at the company have left to pursue better opportunities. I’m hanging on because we can scrape by on my husband’s salary for now, and most of the jobs out there that I could possibly be hired for require more hours for much less pay. It’s a bit depressing, but my current job offers me enough benefits, like health insurance and a computer (if not a paycheck), that I probably won’t walk away until I’m laid off. Which should be any day now
On a brighter note, I love being in school. I’d originally registered for three classes ― two core classes and a one-credit, four-week class. Now that I’ve finished the one-credit class, I decided to add another full class, bringing my load up to nine credits. I figure as long as I’m paying for full-time status (which is a bargain at about $1,200/semester. How much does a semester of private college cost? Four times that?) I might as well be taking a full load of classes.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been working the past four years, but being a student is something that excites and energizes me. I’m looking forward to building a database with a group of students for my Info Retrieval class (which, incidentally, a student who’s taken the class warned me would be dreadfully boring). I’m already brainstorming topics for my research paper for Information & Society, and I can’t wait for my first web conference lecture/discussion tonight. Here’s how cool I look when I use the web conferencing software and headset:
That's me at 7am, pre-shower and pre-makeup, modeling my headset-with-mic. Taken with my camera phone. Rrrrrroowwr.
Jealous?
I’ll continue to go in to work a few days a week, but for now, I’m putting my energy into doing well in this program. It’s exciting to be entering a field that is changing so much. In the next two years, as I work toward graduation, the field of libraries and info science may look completely different than it does now. I think this is a good thing. Speaking of changes, I hope that by the time I graduate this crazy economic time will have come to an end, and actual jobs will be available. Yes, that would be nice.
I recently had to replace my ancient phone because Nina
Nina + rooster
(that’s her, with her ever-present rooster friend) chewed up my charger, and they don’t seem to be making chargers anymore for my circa-2004 dinosaur:
Brontosaurus
I went to the AT&T store to get a new phone and figured I’d sign up for two years of their usual highway robbery in exchange for a free phone. Hm, it seems the cheapest decent phone I could find was $70 after all the mail-in rebates and bizness. I asked the sales guy what the deal was, and his brilliant response? ”Plastic has become a lot more expensive lately.” Um, SERIOUSLY?
I met this week with the career coach I alluded to earlier. I had put this off for a lot of reasons, the most obvious being the cost (which is a pretty average hourly rate for any one-on-one consultation with a professional, but to me that’s $ that could be spent on groceries, rent, or the occasional night out).
I liked him and I think it went well. One of the things we did was establish a list of my values through a series of what-if questions meant to reveal the things I hold dear. He went through his notes last night and sent me a list. Here are some highlights:
Learning
Teaching
Balance
Creative control
Beauty
Art
Mastery
Culture
Travel/adventure/exploring
The value of ‘control’ kept coming up over and over. My favorite job ever was teaching in a summer program for middle schoolers, where I was able to design my own humanities curriculum and teach it without close supervision. I also organized a circus arts program in the afternoons and directed a performance for families and fellow students each of the three summers I worked there.
There is something wonderful about having creative license and oversight in your job, and I realize not all teachers are allowed this. However, even running one’s own classroom is a certain type of freedom that is rare in the corporate world. I’ve noticed at my job that the less responsibility I’m given, the less sure I feel of myself. The more responsibility I have (as long as it’s not right up against the watchful eye of a boss) the more confident I feel.
As I think about what career(s) I want to pursue in the long term, running my own show (whether that’s being a teacher, librarian, researcher, business owner, etc.) is important to me. As scary as it may be, I want to make my own decisions and suffer the consequences. Granted, I want to do this in a relatively secure job environment, if possible. I guess you could say that I want to take risks but have them turn out well .
How did you get into your current career? Does your career embody your values? Do you have any advice for me?
A friend called last night – one whom I’d met in a study abroad program in Ghana, and with whom I’d later traveled through Northern Asia. She told me she had just become an RN and was starting a new year of school in order to become a nurse practitioner. She related how in the two days between when she sat for the grueling nursing licensure exam and when she found out the results, she felt a strong and sudden urge to “just have a baby.” She was convinced she wouldn’t pass, and sensing an impending life obstacle, she earnestly felt for a few days that the best remedy for being stalled in her career would be to start a family.
In my family, there is next to zero pressure to have kids, for now at least. I’m the younger sibling by five years, and my parents were surprised when I became engaged as soon as I did (after only three and-a-half years of dating!) I know a lot of newlyweds get the baby question immediately after getting married, but no one has really mentioned it to me, except for my boss, who jokingly advised me to ‘wait a long time to have kids’ (he would know – he has three).
Babies sure are cute and I think I want one or more someday, but until that day comes (when I’m 30? 32?) I will fiercely guard my freedom, my self-centeredness and my nights of unbroken sleep. Neither my husband nor I have jobs that could support a family on a single income. The way things are right now, both of us definitely need to work to keep up with our rent and pay off loans. It is nearly inconceivable to think of a third (very demanding) mouth to feed.
Yet as I face a time of personal disillusionment with the work world and indecisiveness about whether to go to school, stay at my job, or pursue another field, having a baby now versus later almost seems to make sense. Especially when a friend in my book club has the most adorable six-month-old son ever, and as I read about amazing mothers such as these, who make motherhood look both heroic and like a completely worthy cause to which to devote one’s life. As odd as it may seem, I sometimes long to go back to the days where women were “just” supposed to run the house and raise kids, while men brought home the paycheck. I realize that motherhood is in many ways a bigger job than simply clocking 40 hours per week in an office, but sometimes it just seems so much more natural than trying to shoehorn myself into career paths that don’t seem to fit me.
Some friends of my husband’s recently had a baby. Their timing had something to do with the fact that the mother wasn’t having luck finding work in the tight job market where they had just moved. Of course, she’s in her early thirties so there was less of a luxurious timeframe within which to work. I would consider doing the same, except for the above-stated financial and selfish concerns, and also because I know I need to make better sense of this career dilemma and figuring out my place in the world before I decide to bring another being into it.
I was telling an acquaintance at a party about my listlessness when it comes to thinking about the future. “Well, you could always have a baby,” she replied cheerfully. It’s true, I could. I’m married now and am certainly no longer ‘too young’ to start popping them out. However I don’t want to have a child just because it’s something to do. I want to really, *really* want one. I just hope that my desire, my financial situation and my biology can conspire to make it all possible within the next nine or so years. If there was just some way to speed up this whole mid-twenties self-discovery process, I’d be all set.
It’s been a little over two months since our wedding, and I’m just starting to see the light again. I’ve been living in the land of wedding obsession for over a year now, and I’m happy to report that I’m no longer having anxiety dreams about our wedding day. You see, the emotions about planning this once-in-a-lifetime event didn’t leave me immediately after we tied the knot. I was still having classic pre-event dreams – the wedding didn’t happen; it did but I don’t remember it; the location/guests/groom were wrong – up until a few weeks ago. I don’t know what it is about wedding anxiety, but it really seeps deep into your bones.
Which is not to say that I didn’t have an absolutely fantastic wedding weekend. Indeed, I made a point of enjoying myself and resolved not to worry about any last minute details once guests started to arrive. My brother’s girlfriend, an event planner, generously agreed to be our ‘day of’ coordinator, which is to say she made sure shit happened so I didn’t have to. I wasn’t sweating it at all the entire weekend: I stayed up laughing and drinking champagne with my college girlfriends the night before, had a relaxed breakfast with friends the morning of, and felt calm and present most of the day. I was able to take it all in – both the emotions I was feeling toward my new husband, as well as all the love from family and friends which was being showered on me.
I’ve heard it jokingly referred to as Post Wedding Traumatic Syndrome – and while I don’t mean to compare planning a wedding to an ACTUAL traumatic event, I feel like there are some eerie parallels. Case-in-point: two nights after the wedding, while taking a mini-honeymoon with another couple (friends in town from England for the wedding) to Sonoma County, I proceeded to drink far too much champagne (leftover from the wedding, of course) and get more trashed than I’d ever been in my life. Trashed to the point where I was rude to my husband and said a bunch of things of which I had NO recollection the next morning. This is highly unusual behavior for me, and while there is nothing that really excuses being a drunken ass, I feel inclined to draw a connection between the stress of putting on an event for 120 people and my subconscious desire to cut loose shortly thereafter (and act assish).
Thankfully the wedding has loosened its grip on me, to the point where I don’t even really care about ordering prints of the photos we got the week after the wedding. It seems far away now, which is weird considering how long I looked forward to it. Of course, the mind being what it is, I’ve focused in on a different source of anxiety which was placed on the back burner during wedding planning: the WTF-am-I-doing-with-my-life-particularly-career-wise question. I’ve got a happy relationship, a great place to live, dogs that make me smile… now if I can just figure out that whole livelihood part…
I came to the conclusion, after a few solid weeks of feeling bleak about the world, my skills (or lack thereof), and my day-to-day life, that it was time to consult a professional about my career crisis. I set up a noon appointment for an initial phone consultation with a career coach and found a quiet place at work to talk – i.e. I parked my car in the parking garage across the street.
I was impressed with the guy’s demeanor, and the fact that he had recently gone through a similar phase of not being happy at a job and finding a way out. For some people, getting advice from someone in their immediate age group might not seem appealing, but I feel like I can get in to this. He says his methodology involves determining strengths, values, and personality traits and finding careers that will match. I strongly believe that my personality (ISTJ last time I checked) plays a large role in how I experience the work world, so I’m eager to see how this all turns out. Once I formally decide to work with the coach, I will write more about it.
In other news, my husband made elk burgers last night. His dad is very much into bow hunting elk and deer – in fact in he grew up eating mostly meat his dad had hunted – and on his visit this month back home, my husband brought back a freezer’s worth of last winter’s bounty. I consider myself 85% vegetarian (the years I spent being vegetarian as a child and vegan as a young adult have left their mark on my eating preferences forever) but I’m open to the idea of wild meat (none of the evils of factory farming to atone for, right?) so I suggested we try some. Although drier than I imagine a beef hamburger to be, I found them surprisingly palatable and non-gamy. The heirloom tomatoes, aioli, cheese and home fries that accompanied the elk meat didn’t hurt either – it was a gourmet version of burgers and fries to be sure.
On a final unrelated note, I was surprised and hugely amused to find out on Saturday night that my mother (whom I have never known to like any popular music, outside of the Beatles and my brother’s band) has a bit of a secret obsession with this guy:
I think I get it. He’s from Utah (as is my mom), is innocent and cute, and has a nice voice to boot. I don’t watch American Idol but I understand the appeal. It’s all about the making of a star, and he seems to have that je-ne-sais-quoi that goes beyond looking and sounding nice. As an added bonus he’s got a very positive, not-yet-jaded vibe (I suppose that comes with being seventeen). So much so that a 50-something who doesn’t normally like anything more popular than Steve Reich can be found rocking out to his single while cleaning the kitchen. I personally think it’s adorable.
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