cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The big job offer In the midst of total chaos and economic break-down, I was just offered a job today by H@bitat for Hum@nity. About $10k less than I was hoping for a few weeks ago, but on the other hand the total economic breakdown may have lowered the cost of living enough that this works out the same. I have been isolated here in a few rooms on the lower of my parents' place for a week now since they did something utterly stupid. One of the first clusters of Coronavirus was in Cary, NC, where my sister lives with her husband and two kids. My kids and I told them that it was completely insane of them to drive there to visit while everyone else was going into quarantine. But these fucking idiots went anyway. So I had to send my children off to their other grandparents for the lock-down hours before my parents came back. I put myself into isolation in a few isolated rooms that would not have been enough space for all three of us. Sure enough, my mother came down with symptoms yesterday morning. Fucking idiot. She went for a test and we won't have the results for a week. My parents are in their early 70's and could easily die from this. I am floored at their profound stupidity. Meanwhile, I've been in this job application process for a communications position with H@bitat and today they formally offered me the job. I asked to think about it til Monday, at which point I will ask for a few thousand bucks more and then take it regardless. A big parts of me looks at this and thinks that I am going to fuck this up and cannot possibly do what they want. But I can also break down the parts of it and know that I should be capable of doing fine at this. It's been months since I left the lab and I haven't had to wake up at a particular time or get things done on a short schedule, but I should be good at this. I would much rather be doing science-focused work, but there are a few mitigating circumstances here. First, I'm sort of desperate. Second, I want to stay here in Ch@rlottesville. Third, most of America's non-profits are about to disappear. They don't have the cash to cover operating expenses for a few months without revenue from fundraisers and events and they will be gone. There is a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done on the other side of this thing. I'm not sure that any other non-profits that deal with poor people or housing here will still exist in a few months. This might be a mission that is really important. With that in mind, I feel like this is something that I should do. It means pivoting away from the thrust of my career that might be hard to re-orient from. But this is the situation that the whole world is in and this the opportunity that I find. Making around $50k would have been very difficult here a month ago. But everyone is out of work now. The cost of housing, gas, electricity and everything else may be about to drop. $50k for the next year or two may be pretty much like $65k before now. It probably means giving up the big river trip that I had hoped to make in April, from here to R1chmond. But that was looking bad anyway since there is nobody available to help shuttle me and my gear to and from the put-in and take-out. Everyone is under quarantine. 11:02 p.m. - 2020-03-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||