Okay Kossack’s so here is the skinny; I have a freaking full time job!!! (and yes I do know that more than two exclamation marks is a sign of an unsound mind, thank you)!
Starting tomorrow I am the Assistant to the Publisher at Firedoglake. I wanted to write this post because the folks in this community have been so incredibly supportive of my job search.
23 months ago when I got laid off I thought, at first, that it would only be a couple of months, may be four before I had a new job. Not to brag but I have very salable skills and I figured that it would be a walk in the park to find a new gig. Sadly my optimism was getting the better of me.
As the months went on I whined some (yeah it was whining) in these pages and you folks all flocked to help me keep my chin up and not give up. There are Kossaks who sent me job posting after job posting (which I did apply for) and offered thoughts on new areas of work that I had not thought of.
I won’t lie, there were so dark days and the crushing hopelessness of not working for more than a year really pounded me pretty flat. Still from that came the realization that I while I did want and need a job, I was no longer really interested in just returning profit to the bottom line of some company. In the middle of my life there had to be some more meaning to what I did.
So I went after the dream, getting paid to be a blogger and an activist. It was not a super easy choice as there is not a lot of money in this kind of work. It meant realigning my expectations for income down, but as long as I was not getting jobs anyway, well, hell, I might as well head in the direction of what I want to do and what is important to me, right?
All of which led to my new job. It is way above what I was aiming for (I just wanted to be the Editor in Chief of MyFDL, or really stretching Ed in Chief of FDL, someday), but when you get this kind of offer, you don’t worry about the fact you were aiming lower.
Daily Kos, Firedoglake and a few other big Liberal/Progressive/Democratic blogs and organizations are on the cusp of really being able to step into a place that the Labor Movement used to occupy. They are places where people who are focused on the little guy can meet and plan and energize each other to action.
This is a very good thing as the Unions have their own structural issues and there is no time to wait for them to work through them. Balancing power is a hard task, but it is one that must occur if there is to be a truly free and democratic nation in the United States. Groups like MoveOn and Democracy for America and the blogs are look to be a new concentration of power that can help balance out the corporations and the fat cats.
For this reason I am just tickled pink that I have been given an opportunity to spend all my time working for a better and more just country, and not just stealing a bit here and there at the office.
But all that is the future. Today I just want to say thank you to the Daily Kos community. We may be fractious, we may argue and call each other names, we might not all have the same view of what is the right way forward, but in the end we do come together (mostly) to support each other. Your support, whether you know it or not, has made a huge difference in my ability to keep going until the breaks started going my way again.
Thank you all! Now, let’s get out there and kick some Republican ass!
The floor is yours.