My parachute's attached to a crazy person!

So, its been two months since my last post. Like I said, not good at this blogging thing yet. But since then, I've gotten a job!

A job! A job! O yes a job has he!

Does it pay what my old job did? No, it pays half.

Does it have perks? No.

Does it have a sweet commute? No the commute sucks hairy retarded monkey ass.

Am I happier with it than I ever was with my old job? Yes, and I'll tell you why.

My job title is Research Assistant. The study I'm working on aims to find out how to better treat people who are suicidal in an emergency room. (Or, as the docs perfer to call it, Emergency Department, it has more than one room.) So my job is to scan the charts as they come in to determine if any of the patients may be suicidal. Sometimes easy, the chart says "Suicidal". Sometimes hard, the chart says "extremity laceration", and then buried deep within, "patient slashed wrists with rusty box cutter and is now squeezing his wounds" - might want to have put that up front.

If I find out that you are suicidal, I'm going to try to find out if you're homeless, really drunk, or in jail. If you are none of those things, I'm gonna come talk to you and try to get you to enroll in my study.

Note please that I did not list crazy, slightly drunk, slightly high, a total prick, or stupid as reasons for which I will not talk to you. As a result, some of these conversations are quite interesting. My favorite so far is the guy who very loudly answered all of my questions...except i wasn't talking to him. I was talking to the guy in the next bed over. Schizophrenics are fun.

I imagine that this will be ripe for blog posts in future. (Being careful to avoid specifics, of course, in order to try and dodge HIPPAA procecution). Check back soon for more "Tales from Suicide Row".

ps. There actually is a row of beds called suicide row in the hospital, when all of them have suicidal patients in them, its called a straight flush.

Once more into the breach

So, it's been one year, one month, and one week since I stopped being employed. Here's how it went down:

I had been working as writer for a security company in New York, with offices all around the Northeast. I was writing training materials, proposals, correspondance, stuff like that, and was moving into some independent business analysis and process improvement stuff too. Sweetums (the wife) matched her residency in Phoenix, AZ. (More about the totally messed up residency matching system in later posts.) So we're gonna have to move.

Long story short, I was told that I could continue to telecommute, since I didn't really have to physically be in the office to do what I did. I even took a voluntary pay cut to make the arrangement more palatable to the higher-ups. Two weeks later I get a call from my boss. On my 5th wedding anniversary. And the day we're closing on our first house.

"We're going to have to find another way to pay you."

Fine, contract work. I'll put together bids on specific projects. I'll work with my boss to find the right rates. No problem. I'll still make what I need, right? Not so much.

Didn't get a response to a single bid. Not one. It was like I just dropped them into a hole.

So I don't know what to call that. Did I get fired? Not really, certainly not for cause. I guess it was kind of like getting laid off...right? Ultimately, what really ground my gears was the cowardice of it all. I worked with you people for five years! I spoke with you every day on the phone! And you (and I'm thinking of one Senior VP in particular here, the guy who I'm pretty sure made the decision to pull the plug) didn't have the courtesy to just say "no", you're done?

WTF?

Since then, I've been in contact with the old folks at my home office, and I've got no beef with them. I decided a long time ago that there was no point in finding out the full nitty gritty of what happened in corporate, or who decided that my ass was expendable. It'll only make me mad. Er. And I'm tired of being mad.

Anyway. That's how that happened.

Peace.

There's a first time for everything

So I never blogged before. Seemed kind of self indulgent. But now with the advent of Twitter, the self-indulgence bar has been lowered to the point where blogging doesn't seem so bad. Truth is, I don't care if anyone reads this, it's for me. A place to rant, fume, and vent about a life that sometimes feels like its spinning out of control.

Mostly it'll be about my job search - ongoing for over a year now. But it'll also be about being a dad, being a husband, being stuck in a place you don't want to be, and muddling through. Maybe it will be entertaining, maybe it will be dull, maybe it doesn't matter which it is. Here it is, my life in free fall.

Enjoy