I swore I would keep this up and do a better job. I guess I'm doing about the same as some of the other blogs I follow these days [mainly RVers.]
Filling out the same forms and paperwork as I've done in the past. The funny thing is all my info is saved from the previous two times, so I have stuff in there from 2012. Who says the government is inefficient?
Excited for and depressed about future changes at the same time, if that makes any sense, and it probably doesn't.
I need to go back to writing about books. Here's my list of favorite books I read last year:
Bowlaway, Elizabeth McCracken
The Border, Don Winslow
The Bird King, G. Willow WIlson
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, David Treuer
Norco '80, Peter Houlahan
Rabbits for Food, Binnie Kirshenbaum
Marilou is Everywhere, Sarah Elaine Smith
Mostly Dead Things, Kristen Arnett
Hollow Kingdom, Kira Jane Buxton
A Cosmology of Monsters,Shaun Hamill
The Lager Queen of Minnesota, J. Ryan Stradal
Hollow Kingdom was my absolute favorite, a post-apocalyptic novel with a crow as protagonist. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee was probably my favorite nonfiction.
Friday, February 21, 2020
Sunday, February 9, 2020
A Brief History of Where I've Been for the last 8 years, Part Two...
The job was located on tribal land which isn't that unusual in my home state, but I never really worked that directly on tribal land before. This tribe was a small-to-medium sized tribe. They had a section of land on the edge of the small town named after them. It was a mix of new and old buildings, the old ones obviously going back to the late 19th century. Many of them were boarded up but some were still in use. There was one that was more like a house that had been boarded up. I was told that had been a boarding school. Often wondered how much bad energy was in those buildings.
The tribe was always building something, new bridges, a senior center, a new gathering place for their pow wows, which were always the major events for their community. They had a police station which was one of the newer buildings. There was a dog who had the run of the place. The tribal employees paid for her food and shelter. She had a fancy dog house behind the police station. When the weather turned cold, the dispatcher at the police station would put a sweater on her, though this was a long gradual process that started in the fall. The dog occasionally was allowed inside the police station, though I was walking by once when I saw her being shooed out the door by the dispatcher, who was giving her a dirty look. Her name was Ju-da-ke, which was "girl" in the tribal language.
The people were probably the friendliest of anywhere I've worked. I'm still in touch and friends with many there, and they helped me with references at this most recent job. I often wish I hadn't left, though it was not really my idea to leave. I have many happy memories of walking outside, past the old buildings and wondering about how they might have looked 100 years before.
My office roommate was Osage, and always kept me informed on the latest goings on with their tribe. I learned a lot about their traditions as well...yearly dances for each of their three districts. She often complained about the Osage from out of state having too much sway in tribal elections. "They vote these people in but we're the ones who have to live with them." This is a common complaint with many of the larger tribes, including mine. Their chief was removed from office while I was there, and that was the talk of the clinic that day.
Many of the employees wore military uniforms to work each day. They were part of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. This was a quasi-military branch that held positions in many of the healthcare facilities operated by the federal government. You've heard of the Surgeon General. These are the other people in the army. In that particular region of the agency, the commissioned officers more or less ran the entire organization. I've since learned that this greatly varies by region, though at the headquarters level it is also like that. Generally, the officers were in the healthcare professions, though they also were in I.T. and engineering. My coworker did not like the Commissioned Corps. Her husband and son were combat veterans and she disliked how many of the corps members thought they were equivalent to the military. They also were much more expensive to employ than the regular "civilian" employees. When we had a government shutdown in 2013, most of us had to work unpaid--except for the Commissioned Corps because they were technically considered military and exempt from the shutdown.
My wife finally joined me just over a year later. We bought a house in Tulsa, which was probably a mistake. I had to commute a long way to work each day, about 75 minutes each way. The job didn't pay as well as I'd hoped, and we were struggling financially. The job market in OKlahoma was not that great for public health jobs, and my wife struggled to find anything above minimum wage. That's the thing about a lot of these states that claim low unemployment---most of the jobs are in the low wage sector. She was offered a position with her previous employer, a promotion, but it would be in the Bay Area. We had to prepare to leave and move back--just a few months after we'd moved all our possession out of our multiple storage units from California.
To Be Continued, eventually....
The tribe was always building something, new bridges, a senior center, a new gathering place for their pow wows, which were always the major events for their community. They had a police station which was one of the newer buildings. There was a dog who had the run of the place. The tribal employees paid for her food and shelter. She had a fancy dog house behind the police station. When the weather turned cold, the dispatcher at the police station would put a sweater on her, though this was a long gradual process that started in the fall. The dog occasionally was allowed inside the police station, though I was walking by once when I saw her being shooed out the door by the dispatcher, who was giving her a dirty look. Her name was Ju-da-ke, which was "girl" in the tribal language.
The people were probably the friendliest of anywhere I've worked. I'm still in touch and friends with many there, and they helped me with references at this most recent job. I often wish I hadn't left, though it was not really my idea to leave. I have many happy memories of walking outside, past the old buildings and wondering about how they might have looked 100 years before.
My office roommate was Osage, and always kept me informed on the latest goings on with their tribe. I learned a lot about their traditions as well...yearly dances for each of their three districts. She often complained about the Osage from out of state having too much sway in tribal elections. "They vote these people in but we're the ones who have to live with them." This is a common complaint with many of the larger tribes, including mine. Their chief was removed from office while I was there, and that was the talk of the clinic that day.
Many of the employees wore military uniforms to work each day. They were part of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. This was a quasi-military branch that held positions in many of the healthcare facilities operated by the federal government. You've heard of the Surgeon General. These are the other people in the army. In that particular region of the agency, the commissioned officers more or less ran the entire organization. I've since learned that this greatly varies by region, though at the headquarters level it is also like that. Generally, the officers were in the healthcare professions, though they also were in I.T. and engineering. My coworker did not like the Commissioned Corps. Her husband and son were combat veterans and she disliked how many of the corps members thought they were equivalent to the military. They also were much more expensive to employ than the regular "civilian" employees. When we had a government shutdown in 2013, most of us had to work unpaid--except for the Commissioned Corps because they were technically considered military and exempt from the shutdown.
My wife finally joined me just over a year later. We bought a house in Tulsa, which was probably a mistake. I had to commute a long way to work each day, about 75 minutes each way. The job didn't pay as well as I'd hoped, and we were struggling financially. The job market in OKlahoma was not that great for public health jobs, and my wife struggled to find anything above minimum wage. That's the thing about a lot of these states that claim low unemployment---most of the jobs are in the low wage sector. She was offered a position with her previous employer, a promotion, but it would be in the Bay Area. We had to prepare to leave and move back--just a few months after we'd moved all our possession out of our multiple storage units from California.
To Be Continued, eventually....
Saturday, February 1, 2020
It's too late to turn back, here we go....
Took the first step in a major life change today. Trying not to be maudlin. This year I'm officially going to undergo at least three of the major life stressors that a person can have. Hopefully no more than three.
So I most likely got the job that I interviewed for. I was told I'm the top candidate, and they contacted my current supervisor at the job I have now [not something I was thrilled with but my manager actually was really nice about it and promised not to tell anybody else, especially not the CFO] and I understand it's being passed on to HR now. I'll probably get a call sometime next week. If my previous experience with this agency is an indicator, I'll then get a tentative offer and will undergo a background check, and then will get an official offer and a start date. I hope the process could drag out later in the spring, but it's more likely that I have maybe five or six weeks.
It's a lot to digest. I know the job is going to be difficult and I'll have to work harder than I've been working. At my last couple of jobs I've tried to kind of work at an average pace and only really worked hard when I needed to meet a deadline. I didn't ask for additional work and tried to really have downtime as much as I could. I know I can't do that anymore.
This will probably be my Forever Job. I'm happy enough with the pay scale to retire here and I'll have the option to do so in about 15 years though it'll depend on health and if I want to try to make a little more if I stick around longer. My past career with the Post Office helps because I already have time in the retirement system. Still, I'm not really happy about it and I think I'll probably be ambivalent about the whole thing until I actually am settled in.
Watch the whole thing fall through. Doubtful, though. The funny thing is I'm actually getting along a lot better with my current manager [who has only been my manager a few weeks] and have been somewhat happy at work over the last couple of week.
Speaking of the Post Office, I don't believe I ever have written much about that, and maybe I should start. Or maybe I should continue to catch up over the last seven years. Funny that I called it a Brief History of the Last Seven Years. RIP Andy Gill. Going to go play some Gang of Four right now.
So I most likely got the job that I interviewed for. I was told I'm the top candidate, and they contacted my current supervisor at the job I have now [not something I was thrilled with but my manager actually was really nice about it and promised not to tell anybody else, especially not the CFO] and I understand it's being passed on to HR now. I'll probably get a call sometime next week. If my previous experience with this agency is an indicator, I'll then get a tentative offer and will undergo a background check, and then will get an official offer and a start date. I hope the process could drag out later in the spring, but it's more likely that I have maybe five or six weeks.
It's a lot to digest. I know the job is going to be difficult and I'll have to work harder than I've been working. At my last couple of jobs I've tried to kind of work at an average pace and only really worked hard when I needed to meet a deadline. I didn't ask for additional work and tried to really have downtime as much as I could. I know I can't do that anymore.
This will probably be my Forever Job. I'm happy enough with the pay scale to retire here and I'll have the option to do so in about 15 years though it'll depend on health and if I want to try to make a little more if I stick around longer. My past career with the Post Office helps because I already have time in the retirement system. Still, I'm not really happy about it and I think I'll probably be ambivalent about the whole thing until I actually am settled in.
Watch the whole thing fall through. Doubtful, though. The funny thing is I'm actually getting along a lot better with my current manager [who has only been my manager a few weeks] and have been somewhat happy at work over the last couple of week.
Speaking of the Post Office, I don't believe I ever have written much about that, and maybe I should start. Or maybe I should continue to catch up over the last seven years. Funny that I called it a Brief History of the Last Seven Years. RIP Andy Gill. Going to go play some Gang of Four right now.
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