And it is a good job. Good pay and benefits, a wonderful bunch of people to work with – in the perfect location and where I can put my talents to good use.
I’ll be working for a trade association that represents providers of mental health and addiction services as a health policy analyst and grant writer. I have a lot of experience working on mental health issues and in grant writing, so it is a perfect fit for me.
As to the location, I wanted to relocate to New Jersey since my daughter is looking to work in Manhattan, but I am currently living in Pennsylvania. So I wanted somewhere I could commute to from here, then, after a few months of catching up financially, ‘flip’ to the other side of my workplace to bring my daughter into commuting distance. This job is only 50 minutes from where I am, and if I move about 15 minutes north of my job, we will be one hour from NYC by train. (ack – I get to go from Corbett to Christie. At least I could expect Corbett to be history next year!)
I have been living with my sister and her family here in Pa. When I arrived here, I expected it to be for 6 to 9 months. That was three years ago. What I left behind in upstate New York, besides many friends, was a home I had put blood, sweat and tears into for 15 years - not too much blood, but there was some since I did my own renovations, and also built a retail plant nursery on the property - built as in borrowed a neighbor’s front loader and excavated a parking lot, then spread the 400 tons of stone I had delivered. There was a lot of clearing of land and putting up of small buildings too – my greenhouse (48’ x 20) and shade house.
So I left friends, my home and my business. At the depths of the recession. The last three years were tough some times. I took a couple ‘survival’ jobs – retail (kmart) and an auto parts warehouse data entry job but I could only last so long at them (6 mos. And 11 mos.). I took over the housecleaning job here at my sisters (one day every other week) too. I was fortunate to have one or two decent landscaping jobs each year which would bring in a few thousand, and I was thrilled to go to Colorado last fall for 10 weeks to work over 110 hours a week (for a pittance!) to re-elect President Obama. But the depression was bad sometimes.
Things at the nursery had turned rapidly in 2008. The landscaping business had opened in 2003, the nursery opened late in 2004, so its first full season was 2005. It grew steadily for three years, but immediately when gas hit $4.00 a gallon in 2008, I started seeing the impact. (My Obama stickers in a pretty red rural county might not have helped, though my decision to put them on and place a yard sign in front of my house was one I’d probably make again. Only some locals might have known that the car in the parking lot was mine anyway, and the house was somewhat separated from the business side of the property, so who knows.)
Anyway, the writing was on the wall. 2009 saw a clear drop in receipts, right from the start. I limped through till the end of the 2010 season, though that last year I was mostly selling off what stock I already had and perennials I grew myself, as well as equipment and buildings. I moved to Pa. in October 2010.
I’m sharing my celebration of my job here because I also want to talk about this place. In January of 2008, after the Iowa caucus, I started hanging out at barackobama.com. I spent many, many hours there that year and occasionally some of the regulars there would post a link to DKos. I would come over, and occasionally try to look around, but landing here within a diary then venturing out to the front page was rather confusing to me at the time! But right after the election, I ‘moved’ to DKos. This place saved my sanity many a time in the years since.
It not only gave me a place to ‘hang out’ during a couple long winters, alone at home - my daughter was away at school, although I did have one pootie and one woozle for company - but the things that this community would do, the stories I would read of some overcoming such adversity, the compassion, the insight, the laughter, it saw me through. And I would like to thank everyone for just being there, and for continuing to be there in so many ways for so many people and causes.
I will still be around a fair amount, evenings and weekends, though those times will be more crowded with things to do now that my days will finally be filled, so I do expect my presence to be less – not sure exactly where on the spectrum it will fall.
So I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you. I know I am not the only one that this site has been a lifeline for, I have seen others say similar things, but I felt it important to remind people here that this place means many different things to many people, and that the community is as important to some as the message and the work.
Thank you all and Happy Halloween!
Thu Oct 31, 2013 at 6:29 AM PT: UPDATE: Thanks so much for all the well wishes! I have to head out shortly - I need to do some significant shopping, my office wardrobe is rather depleted (and some of it remains in a warehouse in northern NJ!) - and I am in desperate need of some decent shoes! I'm time pressed, as I'm supposed to pick up my niece at school at 1 p.m. Following that I'll food shop and cook up my famous shrimp scampi (I'll have to post my own recipe somewhere here soon!), and be around for trick or treaters. (I finally make the rec list, and have to run out on my diary - unbelievable! :) I will pop back in throughout the day. Thanks again, all.