This morning was very emotional for me, honestly yesterday was too. I am a federal employee, and therefore am currently at home, waiting and watching, and trying to plan and live my life, with no idea of when I will be going back to work.
This morning I went into the office to perform my necessary government shutdown duties. Most people didn't have to come in at all. It was a ghost town. A once vibrant and bustling work center was eerie and quiet. There was tension and anxiety in the air for those of us that had to be there, or so it seemed to me. How do you plan your life when on any given work day from here on out, you could need to be back to work in four hours? how do you plan when this thing could be done in the morning and you could be back to work, or it could be months.
How do you even figure out how to pay your bills at times like that? What do you do with your time? do you play and enjoy it? do you get things done? do you eat doughnuts and chocolate and get fat and depressed? Do you go protest the government in some way?
I've never done this before. Monday I didn't think I would have to. I thought it would be like all the other times, they'd threaten and then cave. If I had money I could be taking classes I need to get into grad school so I never have to work for the government ever again. I don't like working for the government. I like having a job. I like the people I work with, but the longer I work as a federal employee, the more years I'm at it to see what its like, the more I realize I get used constantly as a pawn in a multitude of political games. I don't like living my life that way.
Job security? I was told working for the government was a very secure job, in many ways it is. But how secure is it when at seeming political whims you can be furloughed or shut down with little or no warning? I suppose one should just always be prepared, but when you don't make a ton of money, its hard to be able to do anything to prepare even when you can see crap is coming your way.
I feel a lot of things to day, exhausted, disappointed, angry, tired. Mainly I just feel tired. This has been the hardest year of my life. I don't think I can say that enough. I've gone through things this year that I never would have expected or volunteered for. This definitely isn't the worst or hardest thing that's come my way, its more like the straw that's going to break the camels back. Its one more thing on an already overloaded and warn paper thin soul. Sometimes I wish more than anything I could just give up on life, give up on all the changes I made the past year, just quit, something. Just because I'm sick of it and I want to quit. I don't care what, I just want to quit in protest of the fact that I'm sick of everything I have to deal with.
But I am not a quitter. I can't even if I want to. Quitting just isnt' in me. It never has been. It never will be. And once a change for the better has been made, I can't unmake it and go back to how I used to operate, I just can't do it. So I may be shutdown right now. I may be spending time playing guitar, and writing books and blogs, and doing whatever, but I will keep working to not shut off, to not give up on my life, to not give up on goals and dreams , and friends and family. ultimately we are all in this together. I have no doubt that downtown Seattle is going to take a big local economy hit from all the people not at work. But we can survive, and I can meet my dream to one day work in a job I love, where I'm not used by people for political games. I think that's a good dream.
This morning I went into the office to perform my necessary government shutdown duties. Most people didn't have to come in at all. It was a ghost town. A once vibrant and bustling work center was eerie and quiet. There was tension and anxiety in the air for those of us that had to be there, or so it seemed to me. How do you plan your life when on any given work day from here on out, you could need to be back to work in four hours? how do you plan when this thing could be done in the morning and you could be back to work, or it could be months.
How do you even figure out how to pay your bills at times like that? What do you do with your time? do you play and enjoy it? do you get things done? do you eat doughnuts and chocolate and get fat and depressed? Do you go protest the government in some way?
I've never done this before. Monday I didn't think I would have to. I thought it would be like all the other times, they'd threaten and then cave. If I had money I could be taking classes I need to get into grad school so I never have to work for the government ever again. I don't like working for the government. I like having a job. I like the people I work with, but the longer I work as a federal employee, the more years I'm at it to see what its like, the more I realize I get used constantly as a pawn in a multitude of political games. I don't like living my life that way.
Job security? I was told working for the government was a very secure job, in many ways it is. But how secure is it when at seeming political whims you can be furloughed or shut down with little or no warning? I suppose one should just always be prepared, but when you don't make a ton of money, its hard to be able to do anything to prepare even when you can see crap is coming your way.
I feel a lot of things to day, exhausted, disappointed, angry, tired. Mainly I just feel tired. This has been the hardest year of my life. I don't think I can say that enough. I've gone through things this year that I never would have expected or volunteered for. This definitely isn't the worst or hardest thing that's come my way, its more like the straw that's going to break the camels back. Its one more thing on an already overloaded and warn paper thin soul. Sometimes I wish more than anything I could just give up on life, give up on all the changes I made the past year, just quit, something. Just because I'm sick of it and I want to quit. I don't care what, I just want to quit in protest of the fact that I'm sick of everything I have to deal with.
But I am not a quitter. I can't even if I want to. Quitting just isnt' in me. It never has been. It never will be. And once a change for the better has been made, I can't unmake it and go back to how I used to operate, I just can't do it. So I may be shutdown right now. I may be spending time playing guitar, and writing books and blogs, and doing whatever, but I will keep working to not shut off, to not give up on my life, to not give up on goals and dreams , and friends and family. ultimately we are all in this together. I have no doubt that downtown Seattle is going to take a big local economy hit from all the people not at work. But we can survive, and I can meet my dream to one day work in a job I love, where I'm not used by people for political games. I think that's a good dream.
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