Wife Got a JOB!!!

Pure Joy

Wife got a JOB!! 

That's right. 

Wife is now employed. In one week, in fact, she's gone from unemployed to having a full time and a part time job. The place she was volunteering at by helping with their marketing, media and grants, loved her so much they wanted to start paying her. So on Monday, she agreed to being on contract for 55 hours a month. There was a lot of negotiation, they wanted to have her part time for 20 hours a week, but it just wasn't going to be enough to pay the student loans and wouldn't have left her open enough for full time work. It is a HARD choice to make. 

So that happened, then by today, she had two jobs that she had interviewed at that said they would let her know this week. At noon, one called, the one that's just 5 minutes away, and offered her the job. Full time for a marketing company. 

"Yes yes yes yes yes," she said to every question. After a minute, "You know, I need to calm down a bit, I've said yes to you more than I did to my husband when he proposed." 

This is what that feels like: 

She then called me at work. 

"I got hired," the words nearly choked her as she tried to spit them out. Then she proceeded to sob incomprehensibly for two minutes while I calmly tried to ascertain which company hired her (the other one emailed to say they would not be able to choose until Monday as they had a scheduling problem with one candidate). I finally got it out of her.

"Come home" she said. And I told my boss and got the OK to go home and start feeling human again.

Pure bliss

I got home, and together we drained a bottle of Friday's long island iced tea and half a big bottle of wine. She was drunk by 5 and asleep by 6. 

Her search started in full a year ago at about this time when her former boss said she wasn't allowed to keep herself safe after a student threatened her - plus working with mice and bats doesn't help matters. She worked with me for 5 months which got her away from that, but has had nothing since March 1.

As an idea what it's like out there: Since May 23, we have sent out 174 resumes. We erased the records from before that because it was just too depressing to scroll through. I sent out six applications on my birthday. She was getting about 3-5 contacts a week - either phone, in person, or recruiters if they count during the past several months. We just needed one yes. And we finally got it!

On another note

You may have noticed the number of blogs trailing off lately. Well, applying to 4-5 jobs a day kind of curtails one's time to do things they enjoy, like writing. Plus I've been writing some art reviews for another publication, and that takes some time. But now I can also make another announcement.

Wife and I will be starting a new blog!

We've been working on it for about a month, banking posts ready to go.

I started Myths of the Midwest in 2011 to help myself stay sane. It has been pretty much a chronicle of wife and I as we struggled out of a crushed dream of a doctorate for her and the rather constant struggle of finding our place in the working world. I appreciated everyone who read it. I enjoyed sharing some of the more insane things that happen from time to time in my awkward life. I also got to share getting engaged and married and the first year of married life. It was a vent and served its purpose well, though it never really caught on much.

The new blog will be a lot of the same topics, but more ordered into categories to share actual tips and empathy to job seekers, notes about writing and advertising, and posts about the things we enjoy about life in the cities. It'll be our calling card for potential freelancing jobs, and now that we're both finally, solidly employed and hopefully getting by through the next year of taking care of shit that's been squeaking by like the fact wife has no work clothes beyond her interview suit, my car is on life support, hers needs brakes, and a ton of other stuff that you have to put off just so you can eat.

The new blog is in the design phase - utilizing some friends we've picked up along the way and their wonderful talents. The nice thing is it won't have to be anonymous. We'll be ourselves and try to bring the funny and the frustrating. I hope you'll join us. It's probably a month off yet or more considering web design can be a bitch, but consider this a teaser. I'll send a heads up when it gets going. Thank you for reading, it meant everything.

Fargo Jones

Social media experience is NOT A THING/My new dentist sucks

Been applying like a mug to get wife a permanent gig. This contract work at my place of biz wasn't going to last forever. In the past week, we've sent out 30 or so apps, contacted two placement firms that are talking to wife, and I did some LinkedIn networking like a mug and got another person in a local business communication group I belong to to take a look at wife for a social media position at their company.

Now, social media is like the baby of a species you have never seen before. No parents. You don't know how to deal with it. And it's only a couple years old. Some people get lucky and have successes, but when other people try to repeat that success, it's just white noise.

What works in social media is new, interesting things. No matter how many experts you wrangle, or examples you bring in, that's the bottom line. You just have to keep throwing out new things and hoping something will stick.

But, this potential employer wanted someone with a few years of professional social media experience. THAT IS NOT A THING. The damn concept was unknown a few years ago. Companies did social media, but not many, and not to the extent they do very recently, and certainly not as a full time gig. So I want to ask this person what the fuck, but can't cause there still might be a position at that company down the road that will work. We're meeting her for coffee maybe in the future, so perhaps I'll get to ask this question.

Secondly, I had three fucking cavities filled this week. We used to go to this dude in Fargo for our dental needs, and he was AWESOME. Only dentist wife has ever liked. I agree. He made dental work seem easy.

So I was somewhat relieved to find out the dentist we chose here had gone to school with him.

Wife got a cavity filled on Tuesday. She moaned and complained that it was a lot worse than before. I scoffed. "Dentistry gets better every year."

Then I went in last night, and had three fucking cavities filled. And oh my GOD it was like being waterboarded. the stupid drill was shooting water down my throat so I couldn't breathe. The dentist was like, try to breathe through your nose (with my mouth open,which I have NEVER understood as advice. Am I just weird or is it impossible to breathe through your nose with your mouth open?) Then she left after filling one and drilling the other two so she could check on another patient.

I welcomed the chance to breathe. but my tongue started to explore the drilled teeth and holy shit do they just strip mine mouths now? I felt like the entirety of my tooth was gone except a couple peaks around the edges.

Then she mentioned possible root canals in the future and I'm OLD I"M SO OLD JESUS FUCK.

Anyway, here's a better blog about dentists. Enjoy.

Sallie Mae Can Suck My Balls Clean

Life lately:

Enjoying the hell out of working with wife. She is contracting with my company, and making such a good impression that the president the other day was like "Get ____ to help you with that project" to one of the sales head dudes. We eat lunch together every day. We're kindof sickeningly in love :)

Working on weekly goals, some we reach. Others not. This week, to only eat out twice, both times because of work reasons.

Met with a lawyer and found out we are in too much debt for chapter 13, and make too much money for chapter 7. (last year, I would have qualified for a chapter 7, but couldn't find the $1600 that it would have taken to file it since I had no job, so go figure). We literally can't declare bankruptcy even though we have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans between us and will NEVER be able to work it all off. Our loan debts take all my paychecks per month leaving not quite enough for rent. So we rely on wife to make money for us to live on. There's something rather freeing about the fact we cannot discharge student loans (because Sallie Mae in 2005 lobbied congress to pass a law making that impossible), yet they are so large due to predatory lending that we cannot possibly keep up the payments. Something freeing about looking at indentured servitude for the rest of our natural lives. In fact, it's weird because even indentured servants got off after 7 years. Fannie Mae has us for life without parole, and it's all perfectly legal for them to do so.

It's easy to denigrate us for taking on so much debt. But we aren't alone. Student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year. There's no question it's the next bubble, higher ed. As more and more of us, fed the lie that higher education is the key to a better life, take on debt, then find no jobs for us on the other side, we are not going to be able to pay back the promise/lie you fed us, America. But hey, don't take my word for it. Other bloggers have said it far better than me.

We keep on truckin on. Sallie Mae suicide is certainly something we discuss on an intellectual level, since being in this position sucks so much balls, and no one gives a shit because you took out the loans willingly to chase the dream that we are fed about education being worth the cost. But in the end, I keep saying, we don't have a house, we don't have cars worth more than 300 bucks. we really have nothing to our names, so what the hell would they take? They can garnish wages, sure, but would any sane judge garnish so much that I can't afford rent let alone food or gas to get to work to pay the wages they garnish? It's hard to say, since this insane system has been upheld by judges so far.

Maybe once enough people are out of work and in life-debt to Sallie Mae - and given the exponential costs of higher ed, that won't take long - things might start to change. Until then, will keep going to work, keep paying the interest only payments that are more than i made in a month at my first professional job 10 years ago.

Sigh.

Bipolar Life in 2012

In typical fashion I’m a day late on reflection. Seems that all the year of 2012 blogs are already out and done.

I was at a show the other night, the Vilification Tennis group doing their F**K 2012 show. They are a wildly inappropriate insult comic group and always a blast to go see. You will think “Oh, you didn’t” at least once during the show, often while laughing. Here’s a video of them at the renaissance fest.

 I cannot repeat the Red Hook jokes, but they did help me personally to find some way through that shit that has been weighing on me for the past month.

Well, during the show, one of the activities was to ask the audience who had the shittiest year. They asked people to raise their hands to share. I thought over the past year.

I started off the year 4 months into unemployment that would last another 2 then got some sort of contract-work-employed for a couple months. I would have declared bankruptcy if I’d had the $1,500 for a lawyer. I was 3 months into pre-foreclosure on the house. I told my mother I'd had thoughts of suicide in two emails, and she never responded. I broke off contact with my family. I’ve hit my heaviest weight ever in the last week. Wife is now living in the uncertain contract position life where we never know when she will be paid and how long she has a job. Wife’s years of school loans are coming due at a rate of $900 a month to begin with. We enter 2013 with no savings, no safety net, and capped off the holidays by walking out on Christmas weekend with wife’s family after her grandmother said one too many criticisms of wife (a long list 33 years deep that includes how she was too big to ever get a husband, too dumb, useless and now added too loud, so thanks for that new complex). Also had a fun fight with her family members who were complaining about homeless people begging for money, when we were literally weeks from being among them when I finally landed my job.

Yet. I didn’t raise my hand.

And not because I was scared to speak in public. I don’t have that fear.

I didn’t raise my hand out of some sort of “could be worse” thing.

For every piece of crap part of my life over the past year, I also thought about the things that went right.

We sold the house before it was foreclosed, without owing money. I got hired by an awesome company and doing what I love – writing and creating. I am doing better without my family, and now know they can’t manipulate me through money, even when times are at their worst, and no longer accept money from them. I do pretty well feeling like shit about life on my own without their help, and Wife’s work is uncertain, but it’s a fuck of a lot better than working for Lisa Larson et al. at Hennepin Technical College. She gets paid closer to what she is worth, is respected for what she can do, and has gotten to know my colleagues better than me since she’s more of a people person than me. We get to go to work together every day and eat lunch together. We got on a debt reduction program. We quit smoking in August and it has stuck. Once I got my job, we have been able to start fully participating in life in the Twin Cities by having fantastic dinner experiences at The Melting Pot, the Lexington, Mort’s Deli, and more. We spent our anniversary in the St. Paul Hotel, where we got upgraded to the poshest room where presidents, dignitaries and celebrities stay. We’ve gone to Twins games, Paul F. Tompkins, Wits, Sleepwalk with Me with both Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia at the screening, the It’s A Wonderful Life Radio Play, a Roast of Ebenezer Scrooge, the ballet, Art a Whirl, the Walker Art Museum, Northern Spark, the Aquatennial fireworks, Prairie Home Companion, Canterbury Downs horse races. Instead of not being able to go to things because we’re broke as shit, we can’t go cause we simply can’t find the time cause there’s too much we want to do. We’ve had trips to the North Shore, Duluth, and Red Wing. Wife’s best friend made it home safely from Afghanistan. Wife overcame fear of heights to go with me up Lutsen mountain in a gondola. For one month, we were both happily employed full time (more than we’ve ever been). We’ve been relatively healthy this year. I’m off all medications. Our cars have miraculously made it through another year.

2012 continued our bipolar life, which would have been a good alternate name for this blog. Highs, Lows, and few inbetweens.

BTW, the guy who won the shittiest year award: Got the Harley he’d saved up for years for, six months later, got hit by a drunk driver and spent three months in the hospital. Yeah, that would suck ass.

Wife's Exit Interview Questionnaire

Length of Service:     13 months      

Reason for leaving:   There are so many, it’s hard to narrow down to just a couple. Here are a few. 1. Jean Kreutter, the disabilities services director, disclosed my disability to people without my permission, which after consulting with LDA Minnesota I was advised that that “I would suggest you find out who you can speak to in HR regarding a complaint in which your supervisor is violating your confidentiality and, in a back-handed manner, discriminating based on your disability.” But considering that my concerns were never given credence when I raised them (which I will get to shortly), I figured continuing to raise concerns would be another dead end, so it is better to leave Hennepin Technical College than continue to be discriminated against. I made this clear in a recent letter to my newest supervisor. I’d bet nothing changed. 2. Despite having been promised the opportunity to teach and advance my career while at HTC, it became clear that Lisa Larson would never allow that to happen, she actively discouraged me from pursuing advancement and wrote a ridiculous review of me not meeting expectations in work ethic or teamwork when in fact I have been working overtime for free, I have increased the Writing Center’s visit rate by more than 800 percent and have a 96 percent return visit rate from students – despite this success I was often berated and treated like dirt. Lisa Larson even said “well anyone can do your job.” When I was able to win a free ticket to a $450 educational event in my field, Lisa said I would have to take vacation time to go to it and did not support it. I ended up working longer hours and going to the event on my own time, then bringing that knowledge back to HTC as a free benefit to students. Lisa actually said I should look for conferences that focus on paragraph development and sentence structure, which is not something that exists, and would be like asking a math instructor to go to a workshop on how to add and subtract, it’s counterproductive. 3. On another note, when I raised safety concerns after specific threats from a specific student, Lisa Larson did nothing to help the issue. I filed a report through the code of student conduct in early July, and the matter was still unresolved by the time I left in October. In mid-September, my husband bought me mace to carry with me, and tweeted about it, and this was the FIRST time that campus security had been notified about my safety issue. So to put it in as few words as possible, I am leaving HTC because of discrimination, safety concerns, and I was discouraged from advancing my career in any way.

1.                  What did you like most about working for Hennepin Technical College?     I love working with students. I have been teaching in higher ed for about 10 years and thought I would make a career of it, but HTC has convinced me that I should put my three bachelors and two masters degrees to better use outside of academia. Students were my life, and when the opportunity to teach a class along with running the writing center were taken away from me, I knew it was time to end my career in academia. So in a way, HTC killed any remaining enjoyment I got from being an educator and forced me to start fresh in a new career.  Thanks!

2.                  What did you like least about working for Hennepin Technical College?     Lisa Larson, Jean Kreutter, being told I don’t matter, being told I am worthless                                              

3.                  Did your supervisor explain your job duties and responsibilities? Yes          No x   

Comments       This is a tricky one. When I started, I asked countless times in person and in email to have a list of job responsibilities and duties, but was never provided with one. So I went with what I was told, but that would change depending on the mood of my supervisor. In addition, my supervisor changed three times during the year I was at HTC, so the new supervisor would often contradict the old supervisor’s instructions and promises, and get mad at me for continuing to work under the existing guidelines. Lisa Larson’s catch phrase is “This is the first I heard of it.” She used that no matter what issue was presented to her. This sort of thing happened on a near weekly basis.                                                                     

4.         Did you understand what was expected of you on the job?  Yes            No x                     

Comments       For some reason, I figured it was my job to make the writing center successful. I did that by raising student visits by more than 800 percent the first year. This September, we were up 300 percent over last September. I also had a 96 percent return visit rate from students, so I believe that indicates they found my services helpful. Many even drove down from the Brooklyn Park campus to get help at my center rather than any other service providers. I worked with other service providers on campus, and reached out to teachers. I even sent hand written thank you letters to each teacher who had a student visit the center. Despite all this success, I still got a negative review from Lisa Larson and was constantly told I wasn’t doing anything right. I think that’s just nuts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

5.            How would you describe your work load and duty assignments?

Fairly assigned  x  Unfairly assigned             

Comments       Another tricky one. I felt the work load was sufficient for the center. I think that changed in the past couple months as the writing center operations were given over to the LRC (a less successful service) so I think the workload as it was shifting was ridiculously easy. As someone with more degrees and experience than many instructors at HTC, I felt unchallenged. I doubt Lisa Larson understood what a wealth of experience and education she had in me, as she often seemed to think I just had a high school education, at least that’s how she talked to me. When they removed all autonomy from me, and it became clear that my success over the past year would be absorbed and attributed to Jean to make her failing LRC look better, I knew it was time to go.                                                                                              

6.         Did you ever suggest changes to your supervisor regarding your work?  Yes x        No      

Comments       Invariably, when I offered my opinion or input on a work issue, I was shot down and told I was wrong. I learned if I wanted anything done, I just had to do it, watch it succeed, and then accept the punishment for being successful.  In fact, the whole decision and organization to move the writing center under the LRC umbrella was made without once consulting a single CLA in the writing or math centers (outside of the brief consultation with the facilitator, but I think my feedback to her held up the forward movement of the consolidation, and led to further shutting the CLAs out of the process)                          

7.            Did your supervisor explain to you why the change could or could not be considered?

Yes      No x   

Comments       I don’t think knee jerk reactions of the sort offered by Lisa Larson come with sufficient explanation. For instance, she said I could no longer lock my door to insure my safety from a specific student threat when I was alone in the center. Her reasoning was that other people on campus work with students in offices by themselves, but this didn’t take into account the specific threat to me. I also work with students every day, and in 10 years had never raised such a concern. Lisa Larson said I needed to work through the Code of Student Conduct on this issue, but again, doing that led to months of no action or movement to keep me safe. Lisa never even notified security about the issue.                                                      

8.            How would you rate the evaluation process at Hennepin Technical College?

Good               Poor     x                      Fair                  Unfair  x         

Comments       My review last month from Lisa was completely ridiculous. I have invited her to come and actually watch me do what I do with students, but she has never once taken me or the previous math CLA up on that offer. Her review was based entirely on her personal interactions with me, which are skewed as she does not listen to any input and assumes the worst of me.  My numbers speak for the success of my methods, yet even 800 percent growth doesn’t merit more than “meets expectations.” I wonder what would exceed them.              

9.            What could we (Human Resources) have done differently to better serve you?

Comments       More leadership training for administration on how to listen and not automatically shoot down ideas, how to treat people with dignity. That’d be a good start.        

10.        What can Hennepin Technical College change to better serve its employees (overall)?

Comments       Listen to them. Treat them like human beings with dignity                          

11.       Would you recommend the college as place to work?  Yes               No      x         

12.       What other comments or suggestions do you have about your work experience here?        

I write all this fully knowing that none of it will mean anything. After a year, I’ve seen all but one other CLA leave under similar circumstances, but nothing was ever done to correct the issues those people raised. Instead, the narrative is created that those people were bad workers and difficult to work with, thereby negating any need to reflect on HTCs role in the process.

Asshole Bosses Should Be Fair Game

As someone who has been through the long, hard slog of job hunting, I consider myself something of an expert on job advice columns. You read them, you get advice solicited and unsolicited from others. Some of it is helpful. So much of it is bullshit.

One piece of advice is helpful, but bullshit at the same time. That is the advice to never talk poorly about your former places of work.

I understand that being negative about where you worked before makes you look like a complainy pants, and that the potential employer may not want to bring such negativity into their place. That makes perfect sense.

But let’s take, say, a really bad job for shits and giggles. Say your last job was shredding documents illegally for Enron, or digging mass graves in Bosnia. What the fuck are you supposed to be positive about? “It gave me a great appreciation for proper organization!”

I think part of me just has a bad gut reaction because if you do have a legitimately bad boss, you are supposed to lie about it. And that lie props up bad bosses everywhere. It gives bad bosses free reign to be dickholes to their employees, as long as they are being assholes to white male employees anyway. If you don’t read This Article  that sparked this blog entry, and you should, at least read this excerpt:

It is nearly impossible to successfully sue your boss for being a bully. While there are decades' worth of precedents on gender and race discrimination in the workplace, just being an all-around jerk is sanctioned boardroom behavior.

"The standard for outrageous conduct is so high that people lose those lawsuits," says Dr. Gary Namie, the director of the Workplace Bullying Institute. "Nothing is considered outrageous when committed by management."

So when it becomes OK to lie about your former places of work where you were let go because your asshole boss kept asking you to work 60 hours a week and one time you needed to attend a funeral and he waited an appropriate amount of time before firing you. When it becomes OK to lie about it, all bosses everywhere are protected species. This rule works out like gangbusters for former bosses, who have no reason to be reasonable. I've known people that think Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross is the model of a motivating boss. Not the personification of human pit stain.

I’ve lucked out in the boss department, I should say here. I’ve had good and not as good, but with the not as good ones I was in a position that I didn’t really have to interact with them more than a couple times a year. But luck should not give me an edge over others because I can be honest about what management styles work well with me.

And it rankles me that there’s a management class that can be assholes, not get called on it, and can still fuck your shit up when any employer calls for references.

It warms my heart that Minnesota courts are starting to reasonably explore the issue of office bullies, at least on the legal terms of keeping people safe from violent work environments. That’s something at least, and something that might get higher ups to care about more than just numbers, but how their middle managers get those numbers. 

Week one of the corpratization of Fargo Jones

Transitioning from near-joblessness to full time work is a wonderful kind of crazy. I don’t know how to organize this hodgepodge of a post with any sort of throughline other than that. This is going to be random.

So this week I started the new job, picked out a 401k, insurances, other things. I got to carpool with wife since she works not too far from me. We even had lunch together for two days. That sort of thing has been very helpful in the transition. It’s hard to go from being available for her 24/7 and able to drop what I’m working on to help her, to having to limit our contact to a text or two, a brief phone call, maybe a short email, during the day. Maybe we were co-dependent, but it was a good kind of co-dependent. We work well together.

The new job is my first time writing for the corporate world. I’ve worked retail before, but my writing background is steeped in newspapers and academia. I’m learning new aspects of marketing, like eblasts, and writing press releases like a fiend. I’m watching training videos and learning all the different products the company makes, starting to pick up the business-speak shorthand like EOD. I filled out a personality survey that everyone is doing to figure out how to work with each other as a team. I got perfectionist, which is better than finding out you’re an asshole I guess. Maybe they’re the same thing.

The people I work with are great. The office is a supportive environment. Everyone gets along. My last job I found out on day one that there were definitely lines of tension to avoid between certain people. I haven’t gotten that this time. That’s why they said they were very careful during the hiring process. They were looking for even-tempered, no-drama people. Depite what is posted here, that’s me in work life. And everyone seems to be glad to have me on board, which is just awesome. Validation is a nice thing.

The eco-friendly office is also very nicely settled in between some major roads, yet also buffered by a forresty area. Every day we see turkeys, deer and other wildlife out the windows. One day there was a coyote rambling around out there to remind me that working late and alone at night will not be an option.

This week, for the first time in my life, I’ve been waking up between 6 and 6:30 without an alarm and feeling fully rested and ready for the day. I’ve become an annoying morning person, which is like Captain America suddenly deciding that communists aren’t so bad. I crash at 9 at night. I’m hoping this changes and I go back to being human soon.

And in the middle of all this, wife decided to take control of the family situation and email my parents a detailed account of why we haven’t spoken to them since Christmas, and what needs to be done to figure out a way to coexist in the future, a path to healing the wounds. Apparently we can't exist for a week without five life stressors on the burner. That was two days ago, and nothing back yet.

Last night, we went to WITS, with Paul F. Tompkins and Aimee Mann and hosted by the charming John Moe. We bought the tickets months ago, and it turned out to be my new job celebration event. It would have been a different evening altogether if I was still looking. Wife was not up so much on either entertainer, but I’m hugely into Tompkins, and Aimee Mann as a kicker on that just blew my fucking mind. Once we settled in and the show started, wife began to enjoy things as well, and she could see why I was psyched to go. Then out of nowhere, Neil fucking Gaiman walks out and reads some lines for several skits. What the hell! Wife asked what my favorite part was during the drive home. I said, “Every part. Every single thing was awesome.”  And Aimee Mann is surprisingly very funny!

We're driving out of the parking garage next to the Fitzgerald theater and waiting to turn onto the road, when Neil Fucking Gaiman drives up next to us on the right, also waiting to turn onto the road. Wife freaks out, for some reason surprised that he drives rather than takes some sort of portal he makes with his mind. He turns and drives off into the night. We do the same.

So now we’re going to see Paul F Tompkins tonight for his standup act, something I wouldn’t have done without a job. We’ve been waiting in the wings of the Twin Cities for so long, going to the occassional free thing, but passing up on opportunities to see great entertainers because of the whole broke thing. Now we’ll get to catch our heroes when they come through town on tour. We’ll get to see plays, and check out the best places to get (fill in food item here). I’m looking forward to it. 

Enjoy some Aimee Mann!

and go here for a wonderful video clip of Tompkins talking about being broke, which seems appropriate for this blog. 

http://comedians.jokes.com/paul-f--tompkins/videos/paul-f--tompkins---creme-of-bitterness

Transition to a non-shitty state

Still on the road to recovery from joblessness. Monday will be the first time in our 4.5 year relationship that both wife and I are fully employed at the same time.

Last night, wife spent time sitting on the kitchen floor working on a budget.  I was browning ground turkey for manwiches, trying not to be, well, negative me. I failed.

Wife: So the way I want to do it is that after all the bills, we’ll have 60 a day to spend on gas, groceries, hair, whatever. We just have to keep track of the one number each day. If we know we have groceries or something coming up, we cut down on spending for a few days before. 

Me: I like that it’s one number rather than trying to keep track of gas budget, food budget, entertainment budget, and so on.

Wife: What’s wrong? (She has a sense)

Me: Well, This is your fourth budget now in three days.

Wife: Yeah. So?

Me: We’ve never been good at sticking to budgets.

Wife: So why don’t we try this one?

Me: Because I know us. Diets, working out, that time you wanted to do a load of laundry every day, each time it lasts for about four days.

Wife: Why do you have to be so negative?

Me: I’m sorry. We’ll try this.

Wife: I mean, shit, I’m just trying to set up a system here.

Me: I know.

Wife: God.

Me: I’m sorry. I just…

Wife: What?

Me: Well, I think a big difference between now and all those other times where making a budget didn’t work is, well, we were fucking poor.

Wife: Yeah.

Me: You can set all the goals you want, but if you don’t have enough to cover basic needs like rent, food, gas, and whatnot, it just won’t work.

Wife: I know.

Me: But you know what?

Wife: What?

Me: We’re going to be OK now. We’ve both got jobs. We’ll have enough coming in for necessities, debts, and can even save money for emergencies. For the first time in our lives together, we don’t have to be in survival mode.

Wife: …

Me: I know.

Wife: I’ve never had that. I’ve been in suvival mode since high school.

Me: And you don’t know any other way of life.

Wife: No.

Me: It’s scary.

Wife: Yes. (Starts to cry)

Me: I’ve been waiting for that to happen. It finally hit you. It hit me yesterday.

Wife: Yes. But the thing is, we aren’t there yet. We’ve got to get to June. And can you just let me be in survival mode a little bit?

Me: Transition survival mode?

Wife: Yeah.

Me: Absolutely.

Wife: It’s hard to let it go.

Me: I know.

Wife: I’m also scared about us. We’ve never been together when things are going well.

Me: I know. It’s scary for me too.

Wife: I’m having to make up things to worry about with you. Like you getting into a car accident, getting cancer, finding another woman – pretty much anything that ends with me losing you.

Me: Okaaay…

Wife: I now it’s nuts, but I can’t stop it.

Me: Well, It’s hard to stop worrying, and now that we don’t have to worry about where rent is coming from, you have to put that worry somewhere.

Wife: It sucks.

Me: We’ve been through so much shit. We don't know how we'll be with each other during the good times.

Wife: I know.

Me: We’ll figure it out. I promise I won’t go anywhere. You’re stuck with me, buckko.

Wife: OK. 

Cleaning up the jobless aftermath

I know I'm posting a shit load more than usual, and I know that leads to a downturn in readership, but shit, I got a job! And I have a lot to process.

The breakdown came yesterday. It’s quite a different feeling to have all these stresses and weights on your shoulders for months and months.

First, an interesting tidbit about credit cards. When you decide to stop paying them, you get a lot of phone calls. Luckily, we live in an age where our phones tell us what area code a call is coming from, and you can just ignore them. But it was getting to be about 12 calls a day to ignore.

I wish I could have picked up, to say, yes, I’ll send you a payment straght away. However, I learned early on that when they say “We want to work with you,” that means, “Pay us the full amount you owe us now.”  Don’t have a job, or money? Too bad, pay us.

(warning, video has strong language)

The crazy thing is after a few months, you start getting really ridiculous offers. At one point, they said I could pay off the whole 20,000 on the card with just 11,000 in four easy payments. You got to wonder, what the hell do they think I’m not paying for? Because I’m secretly stashing 11,000?  But it occurs to me that if you don’t give a shit about your credit score and you want to simply cut out a lot of debt, stop paying for a while and see what happens.

I have a bankers box full of recent bills, paystubs, late payments, tax returns, house information. It’s about 10 pounds worth of documents I used to fill out the lawyers form for bankruptcy. It’s been sitting there, waiting for me to have enough money to move ahead with it. Then I sold the house and got hired. So all that was left was about 30k in credit card debt.

And with the new job, I have the ability to make things right. I was more than willing to do bankruptcy and take a dump on my credit rating. I don’t want to buy a house again for a long time, and used cars are the only option I’ve ever thought would be available to me. Renting if we ever decided to move would be difficult, but we are settled with no plans to move for another four years anyway. Moving sucks balls.

On Wednesday, I called ACCC, a nonprofit debt relief company to see if I could get on a debt management program. They set me up to start at 770 a month for nearly five years to get out of it, which was less than I imagined. If I were to continue paying the minimum payment on these cards, it would cost me 1000 a month and take 25 years and about 17000 more in interest. They asked me to call each of the five cards to close the accounts.

OnThursday, I called each card. The big one, the 20000 one, gave me an offer to pay off directly to them, 270 a month for 60 months. They would forgive the interest, so the total cost would be 16000, with 0 percent interest locked in for those 60 months. I called ACCC back and they were like, shit, yeah, take that deal. So now between the two, it will be 550 a month to fully pay off my debts. Half of that for 4 years, the other half for 5. And I’ll be out.

Not to mention we can start paying back the family debts that accrued just so we could eat PB and J sandwiches and fill the car.

And after all that, I started putting the papers I’d pulled out of the box back in. All the credit bills, all the paperwork, the 10 pounds of paper that has felt like 2,000. And my body began to shake, and my face clenched in tearless sobs. And I can breathe. 

I got a job!!!!!!!

It’s hard to know where to begin. How about the numbers?

9 months

500 applications (at least)

50 interviews

1 job.

A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Plus a side job editing stuff that I can continue to do to bring in some extra money each week.

Plus some freelancing.

And I sold the house.

On top of that, this new job pays nearly 30 percent more than the old one in Fargo (which is about right for the difference between here and there according to some sites). After 9 months of trying to pay for a wedding, going DEEP into credit debt, trying to figure out how to make $50 last the week when one gas fill up takes most of that, trying to remain sane, I have a new job that starts on Monday. Yesterday, we were wondering how the hell we were going to pay rent in June. Today, we are planning a budget that more than doubles what we were “living” on.

I can soon get an oil change for my car that has muscled through 5000 miles since the last mechanic set eyes on her.

I can soon own more than one pair of kacki pants.

I can get new shoes after 2.5 years on the last pair, daily.

I can have more than a carl budding lunch meat sandwich and ramen for lunch every day.

24 hours ago, we were trying to figure out how to come up with 1500 for a bankruptcy lawyer. Today, we can decide to go through a credit counseling service instead. They couldn’t help me before without a steady income.

Tomorrow, I have a therapy appointment. I’m still going, cause you’re probably wondering why I haven’t been already for criminy sake.

Job hunting has never been this hard in my life. It has been brutal. Painful. Confusing. Madening. Frustrating. Full of moments that seem like, "This is it, this is the one!" and then having that job pulled from your open hands, and then crushed in front of you. And every time you see Romney saying he's jobless, or see some politician on tv talking about how jobless people need to just get back to work you want to punch their grandchildren while they watch. Better yet, make them apply to jobs they are more than qualified for for 9 months without landing anything.

Every job advice column grates on you. You follow the advice, you blame yourself, you want to scream at HR computers who disqualify you without explanation.

Its experiences like this that people with jobs just don’t understand. It’s so easy to get comfortable, to think that you are a highly qualified, great worker with impecable references and qualifications. But the moment you take that leap into the unknown and find out how none of that means squat in a new hiring computer system that rejects you without a chance after you spent 2 hours filling out their stupid forms that repeat every goddamn thing that is already on your resume. Yet, don't accept that where you are is where you will have to be forever. Fear of leaving a job you hate can be just as soul-killing as trying to land a job you'll love.

Yeah, today is a day full of relief, fear, confusion, a new ability to breathe. I’m still trying to process it. It’s going to take a long time to recover.

Cee Lo, I need to go enjoy this breathing thing, please take it from here:

(addition): Long talk with the wife last night on how to be smart about this. How not to do the dumb thing and go money crazy the first month. We can live with our laptop that's missing a P button and has a cord held together by duct tape. We can live with the couch that got messed up in the move so now it feels like sitting on the floor. Slowly, carefully, we will crawl our way back to normalcy. 

The Wife Speaks!

[Fargo Jones here. Today, I was a chauffeur for my wife as we got free dental x-rays at her school, then headed to a conference in downtown Minneapolis. I sat and applied to jobs while she went to breakout groups. She came to find me after one of them. "We have to go now." She was steaming mad. And not at me! As she told me about what happened, I said, you need to write about this. This is gold! Gold I tell ya! Below is her guest entry on my blog. I swear I didn't write a word of it, especially the nice things she says about me. She asked me to interject wherever I wanted, and when I do so, it'll be in brackets. Like this]

17 months ago, the dream of achieving a Ph.D. in literature at UND was ripped from my grasp.  The business of achieving Ph.D.'s in the humanities isn't like other fields.  Most medical doctors can practice medicine in life or death situations after 7 years of post-secondary education.  I completed 4 years for my bachelors, 2 years for my first Master's, 2 years for my second Master's, and 4 years towards my Ph.D., which, ladies and gentlemen equals a total of 12 years of post-secondary education.  12 MOTHER FUCKING YEARS to teach people how to write a sentence.  In most professions, you get to some point where industry standards exist.  Hair stylists, nail technicians, medical doctors, nurses, and auto mechanics all take board exams to practice their professions.  But, Ph.D.'s in the humanities do not have ANY industry standards.  Instead, every school can create the craziest, most unfair requirements, which they can change at a drop of a hat, to prevent people from achieving their dreams.  I gave up my life for this dream, only to be brought down by unfair, unachievable requirements and self-absorbed faculty members who collectively decided that I was NOT Ph.D. material.  They forced me out of the only world I knew, and my dream was shattered. 

Too many people use the cliché that time heals all wounds.  I resigned myself to screaming "That is FUCKING BULLSHIT! You should be wearing a HELMET!" at all people who say that to me.  While the wound isn't gaping, I still can't breathe several times a day because of the pain.  I was literally told that I didn't belong in this world, so I created a new dream, with my beautiful and talented husband in the Cities.  Followers of this blog are quite aware of our trials and tribulations.  But yes, the dream was shattered, followed by 8 months of unemployment, followed by 6.5 months of my husband's unemployment which leads us to today.

Today my current job forced me to attend the MNCUEW Conference.  I should have been excited to get away from a rather hectic week at work, which resulted in a new student visit record.  My stats say that I have increased student retention and visit rate by 1600%.  Yep, that number is right.  I'm married to the most amazing man, AND I wore the cutest dress ever.  I should have been ok.  But, walking right back into the trauma, all by myself, felt surreal.  The fact it was held at the Minnesota School of Art and Design, and I was surrounded by pictures of abstract vaginas didn't help.

The first and only session I attended today was titled: "Teaching Inside and Outside the Classroom" which was supposed to be a panel "composed of higher education professionals with graduate degrees in English. The panel addresses the multiple career paths, including careers in student life, academic support, and higher education administration, available for those with English backgrounds who elect not to teach." Turns out the panel consisted of two deans, who were clearly best friends, from a local community college.  Sadly, the session was not well attended, which indicates the worst 2 words known to man: audience participation.  MOTHER FUCK! 

When it was time for me to introduce myself and say what "my dream job was outside of teaching" it was if I was possessed.  Even now, some 8 hours later, I still wonder what came over me.  Did I get some sort of contact high from the art?  Was there something in the vegan lunch they served which was a bit too "organic?"  So I said my name, my two jobs, and the following: "I tried the PH.D., and I don't want to teach full time because contact with faculty makes me vomit in my mouth a little.  This week alone, I worked with 75 different students in 3 days, and I just don't know how much longer I can keep this pace up."  It was as if my filter had disappeared.  What the hell, "vomit in my mouth a little," that phrase is saved for my husband.  But, everyone laughed, as they always do when my insanity starts showing, and I became the negative, overwhelmed, underachiever in the back.   

The women believed the best way to tell us about our future was to brag about their perfect lives.  They handed out sheets of paper with their job trajectory and said such garbage as "I've never had a job I didn't love going to everyday," "My job title is Dean of Innovative Teaching & Learning.  Isn't that an exciting title?" and "I've never been without a job."  Was this included in the program? HELLS NO!

Their suggestions for getting a dean job were the following:

"You could sell courses to online universities for 20-30 dollars a course."

"If you're feeling overwhelmed, take a sabbatical."  [This is what Deans said to a room full of adjuncts and staff workers. They don't get sabbaticals unless you count not hiring an adjunct for a semester a sabbatical.]

"Just market your skills a little differently, and you'll get the job of your dreams." (Notice how they didn't exactly give concrete suggestions about how to do that)

"I know there are other jobs out there, but I just don't know what they are." [Good thing you have this fucking session about other jobs for teaching backgrounds, you stupid fucks]

Intermixed with this incredibly unhelpful advice was verbal masturbation about their lives.  I felt like they were saying, "How great is it to be me. You should all want to be me."

But, the one thing, that pushed me over was the following comment: "You will NOT get a dean job without a Ph.D. in the metro area.  If you do not go back to school, you must move to greater MN. My suggestion to the woman in the back is to go finish your Ph.D." [Never mind that we tried greater MN, it didn't help. Also, wife's bosses have less education than she does.]

Seriously, if I could have picked the worst thing said to me ever, this would have hit the top of the list.  I mean my husband's mother told my husband, shortly after the wedding "I can't find anything to love about your wife" was less hurtful than this.  The thing about is, though, only one of the two women had her Ph.D. and the woman who said this to me was the one who didn't. 

Fortunately, when discussion time arose, one of my husband's friends from his Creative Writing Days, who just happened to be at the session announced, "Well, you made my decision clear.  Admin is not the way to go for me."  I could have hugged him.  Here we were, 12 overworked, underpaid, exhausted human beings searching for a way out, a ray of hope, an idea that we hadn't thought of before to get us out of our current predicament.  Instead, I received a spear to my heart, a re-opened wound from UND, and hatred of two women whom I will never see again. [I want to say thank you to that friend for verbally bitch slapping these two condescending bitches.]

To them I say, Fuck you, you do not matter.  I am grateful that I do not have to work with you two bitches every day.  And, to UND and my husband's mother I say, Fuck you, you do not matter.  In spite of this session, my husband and I will find a way off of this dark, dark path we are on and into the light.  By holding on to each other and our absolutely magical love, we will find a way.  And, I thank you, dear readers and followers of my husband's blog, for indulging me in this rant and for supporting him in his daily struggles as a Midwest writer.   

I wrote this while in my boxers

So week three of the temp job is going along nicely. It’s late tonight, and I haven’t blogged in a while. Wife is sleeping, dreaming poorly if history is any indication. Lots of things going on, and I don’t know how to organize it all into a coherent blog from the heart.

Temping. I have to say that I have truly enjoyed the mind-numbing trudgery that is my temp job for the past 2 and a half weeks. Mostly, I spend my days cutting and pasting from one document to another. Sometimes, I go in and fix html code. Sometimes, I create excel documents on what information is missing. Sometimes, I read over pages and pages of numbers to make sure that they are all correct. But, I’m getting paid for the first time in a long time, and that’s nice. I got to work overtime last week by going in Saturday. Time and a half kicks ass.

Not to complain about getting hung with a new rope, but it hasn’t made hunting for a permanent position easier. I now spend my few hours not working and not trying to tackle the laundry or keeping connected with the wife by applying to jobs. I’m still up for a couple, that said they would call two weeks ago. I send emails every 6 days to see if they are progressing. Nothing.

On Thursday, I went in for an interview at Sears. The internet link led me to believe it was the first of two such interviews, but I was hired after 20 minutes. For $6 an hour plus commission.

I’ve never been a proud person. I’ve worked shit jobs for shit pay and had no problem doing it. I lived for 2 and a half years in a 2 room apartment that had a bathroom in the main hallway, and with no shower where I had to sit in a tub and pour water on my head with a bucket because the tub was too small. I’m pretty sure my neighbor was cooking meth every night too.

But there was no mention of benefits. There was almost an expectation on the interviewers part that I would say no. “Do you have any problems with what I’ve said so far?” was a common question.  Then I was told to get a drug test in the next two days, regardless of what my availability was. The drug testing place was only open 9-4, and on the other end of the metro area. I already had work scheduled for the temp job where I get more than twice what I would earn at Sears.

So now came one of those moments. Those decisions that will haunt you no matter which way you choose.

Left: a soul-sucking job that I woudn’t enjoy, that wouldn’t help with the bills that have already piled up, that would be a large step backward, keep me away from the wife, and horrible to be around when I was with her, and my job hunt would be curtailed for who knows how long.

Right: A soul-sucking joblessness that continues to eat what little remains of my self esteem and self worth. Temp work that isn’t reliable.

A long weekend and lots of soul searching and conversations led us to me not going in for the drug testing. I have an interview Friday to do a similar job to the caretaking thing I did for 8 months after grad school – watching people with disabilities to make sure they are OK. I didn’t mind the work then, and would be happy to do it again. It also pays a shitton better, if not as well as I got in Fargo.

Here’s what keeps me going, in all the darkness. I just need a yes.

One yes.

I’ve been asking for that yes for six months now. And wading through rejection after rejection.

But One. Just one and both wife and I will have full time jobs for the first time in our relationship. We dream of paying bills when they come in the mail, instead of waiting until the last possible day. It’s a small dream, but its ours.

One yes and we will be able to finally take part in some of the events that the Twin Cities has to offer.

One yes, and we can start the long road of recovery back to not having to raid the change jar to pay for gas to get to an interview. To not having to craigslist items to get by for another week.

One yes and our world changes.

That’s what I hang on to. 

Take your job advice and shove it

It’s been one of those weeks where I’ve been disoriented a lot because I can’t hear out of one ear. I get ear infections from time to time, and I’ve had so many at this point, the only way I know is I can’t hear. So now I’ve been on an antibiotic for 12 days and it still isn’t better but I have to wait until Tuesday to go in for something else. Antibiotics make pooping horrible, and it used to be a favorite past time of mine.

The main focal point of this entry, though, is to address those of you out there who like to cast aspersions on people who by hook and crook can’t land a job.

Back when wife was unemployed for 9 months, she started volunteering her time as she searched for jobs. She worked the phone bank for the Fargo Flood people and worked for the Red Cross. They got her out of the house, talking to people besides me, and put something fresh on the resume. She was applying for any and everything in Fargo Moorhead. She applied to work reception at an acupuncture place, teaching at any of the public, private and for profit colleges, student advising, libraries – basically anything that she had some degree of aptitude and experience to do.

While volunteering at the phone lines, she worked alongside middle-aged women who were married to well off people and didn’t need regular jobs. They would give her advice that always came off horribly. One said she should apply to teach high school, which you need a teaching license for which she doesn’t have. The person said she obviously didn’t have a job yet because she was being too picky.

Flash forward. I’ve been applying to about 20 jobs a week for several months now. I’ve become a wizard at filling out my job history, including phone numbers and addresses, from memory. I’ve had a couple dozen interviews, which means I’m in the top 5-10 out of 100 candidates usually. Last week I came in second for a job that would have been perfect. It was gut wrenching, but the interviewer said I did every single thing right, that I was obviously a great candidate, and she wished she had two jobs open. It was a spirit lifting message, since often times they don’t go that far and you are left wondering what happened.

I’m applying mostly to communications positions that fit me between 80-100 percent. That alone keeps me busy, but I’ve also been applying to stop-gap jobs that I have experience in – retail, home health care, admin work. That hasn’t worked either. Side note, menial jobs are much more likely to have to take hour-long ethical quizzes than jobs higher up the chain – seems to me this is backward.

I’ve got two temp-agencies working with me, one creative, one office staffing. Still nothing. I’ve been to job fairs and networking events. I’ve had people in various organizations put in a good word for me. I’ve listed my resume on a half-dozen sites. Still nothing.

Surely there must be something wrong with me, the common thinking goes. Anyone who wants a job can get one in this country. That’s what politicians like to say, and people believe it. They believe that they got a job because of their exemplary skills. I admit I had this too. When wife got a job in the cities, I figured with my strong background, awards, and crazy work ethic, it wouldn’t take long to land a job. I haven't been jobless more than 2 months since I was 15, and even then I usually had two jobs going on at any given time for a 50-60 hour work week. Sometimes, though, life just doesn’t work out that way no matter what you try, no matter how many different types of jobs you apply for.

I’m still getting interviews on a weekly basis with a resume one guy said was the worst he’d ever seen. After so many interviews, it starts to be like acting in a play. You wait for your queue and recite your well-rehearsed answers. For the last interview, I was a little more myself than usual. Rather than follow the advice from books and blogs about how to answer questions in an interview, I opened up a little bit and said what I actually thought when it came to the “what didn’t you like about your job” question. It got me closer to a job than I have before. So sometimes, you just have to chuck all the sage advice out the window and try something else.