Christmas Eve

I'm feeling especially melancholy this year, for reasons I won't go into just yet. Christmas Eve was a big deal when I was a kid. We had a big gathering at my grandparents, where I'd visit with all my cousins. It has been 11 years since that's happened, and sadly I missed the last time because of my stupid job at the Big Firm. One grandparent passed away, and it was just too much to manage to continue to have the family gathering there. Occasionally they had one at the local community center, but that came to an end once my last grandparent passed on [somehow, he hung on until a couple of years ago] as the family has dispersed and the grandchildren have started their own families and some of my generation are even grandparents themselves at this point [it's rural Oklahoma, par for the course.]

It's been difficult for me to travel to visit my parents, sister, and nieces. I will probably try to do so next year. But for this year, I'm thinking about the past, and what has been lost, and wondering what the coming year will bring. Merry Christmas, Imaginary Reader.

Back from the dead....

AFter seven years, it's hard to know where to begin. I worked at the job in my last post for a few years, then financial necessity caused us to move to the Bay Area. We puttered along for a few years. I found a job working for a non-profit. It had good points and bad points---since it was a small organization I was also responsible for HR busywork and some general office manager stuff, neither of which I liked. But I liked a lot of the people and supported the mission. I wasn't planning on staying forever, but hoped to at least last a few years.

The 2016 election changed all that. We were dependent on grants from the Department of Education, and had been doing well for the last few years. We'd actually had a lot of support under Republican administrations in the past, and had hoped that we'd still be awarded the funding we needed. Unfortunately, that didn't happen with Betsy DeVos.

My salary was cut by 40%, and I left as soon as I found something else. It required us to move, though not out of the state. Unfortunately, it was a frying pan/fire situation. I was a federal contractor for an agency where I really didn't have any interest in the work. It was the worst environment I had since my experience at the Big Four. People not working together, even within the same departments. Horrible coworkers. Being assigned work without being given the tools needed to do it. Just an overall feeling of futility. I was fortunate to find my current position after eight months. Back in non-profit, back in healthcare, back working with the Native community though this is considerably different than my previous work in that field [we started off in Native health but have developed more as a provider for the under-served community in general, which is something I view more as a necessary evil for us to be able to continue to provide the services we do for Natives.]

And without going into too much detail, I find myself about to undergo a major life change that I didn't really want, but will probably be for the best in the end. 2020 is going to be a difficult year, and I'm not sure where I'll be on the other side of it all, but I've decided to try and write again in order to make sense of it.