Shifting Employment

In this time of great resignations and remodelings of our lives, I've been informally collecting/noticing stories of people who have made a shift or are in the process of moving towards a shift.

I have tended to focus on people going back to school.  More specifically, I've been amazed at how many women my age have decided to go to seminary in the past few years.  Often these are women who were already deeply involved in church, although perhaps not in a paid capacity.  Often these are women who have hit some sort of ceiling in their current church jobs and need a different kind of theology degree to get to where they need to go.

Most of the people I know are in caring professions, like pastoring, teaching, and medical fields.  Many women who are undergoing career shifts are moving from one caring area to another.  And some are doing something adjacent.

I heard from a woman who went to college when I did, and her job sounded so cool that I had to ask her about it.  She works in a museum that tells about the history of the county she lives in, and she said this about her job:

"I cannot believe I get paid to teach some amazing school children and dress historically on occasion, plant and maintain an antebellum garden, give tours to people from all over the US, research history and genealogy, work with an amazing group of intelligent , respectful co-workers AND get paid to do it!"

I'm recording it here because I want to remember that there's a wide range of jobs out there.  I've been having some anxiety when I think about the future, both the near future and the further away future.  There are all kinds of jobs out there that don't require more education, jobs that can be fulfilling, jobs that don't involve spreadsheets and downsizing, jobs that help preserve the best of what humanity has been and can be.

The Art of Losing

If you came to this blog hoping for a meditation on the feast days of Anna and Simeon, I'll redirect you to this post on my theology blog.

Today is the 1 year anniversary of the date when I was severed from my last full-time job as a college administrator.  I have continued to teach college English classes online, so I am only underemployed, not unemployed.  I tried to claim unemployment, and the state of Florida still owes me over $2,000.00.  I am not holding out any hope that I will ever see that money.

But it could be worse.  We had just closed on our house so we have cash reserves we wouldn't have had otherwise. We got out of that house before the next hurricane.  The next hurricane hasn't happened yet, but it will.  I began my morning reading with this story in The Washington Post about people who weren't so lucky as they continue to try to recover from Hurricane Ian.

Today, I'm looking at very different weather.  I went out for a pre-dawn walk, so that I could get a walk in before the temperatures start dropping.  It was 39 degrees at 6:30, and I had hoped I might see snow.  I did not.

But I did see this door; yes, that's a holiday wreath with berries and pine cones on the door:

It made me think of a first line for a poem:  God lives in the burned out house.  Perhaps God crochets mittens to leave on the branches (too much like Emily Dickinson?), or maybe God just finds lost things to collect:

I am thinking of Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "One Art" with these stanzas that I love:  

"I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster."

I haven't mastered the art of losing yet.  I still dream of a day when all the lost mittens find their mates.

Health Insurance Woes Which Could Be Worse

It has been a long time since I've had a very bad day, the kind of day where morning phone calls and money worries seep across the whole day and poison it.  Yesterday was that day--and I'll admit that it could have been much worse.  There is a happy-ish ending, which makes the feel of poisoning even more difficult, because I feel like I shouldn't be feeling so bad.

My day started out well.  I wrote a poem, and then I wrote a blog post that thought about goals and how I might do more poem writing in 2023.  I wrote e-mails to the charitable organizations asking to be removed from the monthly automatic donations that I had set up back when I was fully employed and had more resources.

I went to the online site to check my credit card record to make sure I had contacted all the charitable organizations, and I noticed that my monthly health insurance premium had jumped from $22.20 a month to $752.16 a month.  So I spent an hour on the phone trying to get that sorted out.  

The good news:  because I called before Jan. 15, I had options.  I switched us from a gold to a bronze plan.  Because of our experience in the past 5 months, with doctor's visits that I thought were covered but we still ended up with a bill, I knew that I didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars more for that plan.

I am still not sure what the bronze plan will and will not cover, but the monthly premium is zero dollars.  Later in the morning, I had a video call with my spouse, and we both ended up depressed.  I wish I could say that I was happy to have caught the increased premium price and felt lucky to have made the phone calls when there was still time to make changes.  I did feel lucky, but I also felt sad and frustrated to be spending so much time on these issues--and money.

In the past year, we've had several different health insurance plans, and even though we've often spent over $1,000 a month on the premium, even though we paid the deductible, we still had thousands of dollars of medical bills last year.  And then you add the co-pays, and the cost of health care really begins to mount.  When I went to the physical therapist after my wrist surgery, I had to pay $45.00 for each visit.  Without health insurance, the physical therapy session would have cost $80.00--it's some savings, but not much.

A few hours later, I had a video call with my spouse, and this topic brought him down.  Then he opened some mail, looking for a doctor's bill that had come in.  Along the way, he opened some year-end statements for our various investments.  Like much of middle class America, our accounts have lost money in the past year.

We ended the call with both of us feeling depressed, like we can't get ahead or even tread water.  In some ways, it's ridiculous to feel that way.  We have resources, we have a very small house that is paid for even though it needs improvements, we want to think that we will/would have some employment options in the future if/when we decide to go that way.

I tried various ways of self-soothing (a walk, some tea, some candy), but it took the whole afternoon for my funk to lift.  By the early evening, I decided I needed some light viewing, so I cued up the latest Sandra Bullock movie, The Lost City.  What fun, with some laugh out loud parts and some adventure and a bit of sadness as the main character says a final goodbye to her dead husband.

Today I want to have a better day, with more writing and more quilt creating.  I want to take 2 walks.  I want to feel better while I'm walking--I've felt SO tired when walking the last few days, and I do wonder if I'm not fighting off some sort of bug.  I'm going to start some bread dough.  I plan to roast some vegetables.  I plan to do the kind of self-care that may keep me from needing to utilize my health insurance.

Of Wounded Wrists and Poetic Possibilities

Yesterday I went to the dentist, an appointment I dread.  I usually leave a routine cleaning with a bloody mouth and sometimes worse.  I have very hard teeth, very prone to plaque, and also, very prone to pre-gum disease conditions.

Yesterday I left the office feeling no pain, and it's not because I was given a sedative.  I am saddened to announce that two weeks before we move, I've met the best dental hygienist I've ever had in over 50 years of going to dentists and orthodontists.

I came home, made and ate an early lunch because I hadn't eaten before my dentist appointment, and settled in to file my unemployment claim for the past 2 weeks.  In order to get the puny amount of unemployment money that is due me, the state of Florida requires me to log onto the clunky online system to apply.  I have to list the five jobs I've applied for each week and to let them know if I've earned any money from other sources.

Yesterday was the first time I had money to report, which led to an interesting experience with the clunky online system.  I couldn't make the pull down menu work, the spot where I was to choose from past employers.  I figured out a work around, but it took time.  And this was after the website crashed at an earlier point, and I had to log on again--happily, the information already entered wasn't erased, but the log on process takes time.

It seems a metaphor for modern life somehow.

I know that lawmakers have made this process harder than it needs to be.  I am trying to claim unemployment benefits, not charity.  I am entitled to these benefits because I was let go from my job.  This shouldn't be so hard.  Because I am entitled to this money, I keep trying however.  I will be interested to see if these weekly amounts of money will be reduced in light of what I earned.  At that point, I may change my mind about whether or not this is worth it.  

Then it was off to the physical therapist.  As we work on getting more mobility to my wrist, these visits are harder, both physically and emotionally.  We measure progress in very tiny increments, and I'm making progress, but there's still a very long way to go.

I had a lot of pain through the night.  I probably should have given in and taken some ibuprofen, but I don't always have that presence of mind in the middle of the night.

I am thinking of my trip to LTSS (Southern Seminary) and how strange it was to be surrounded by images of Christ with nail marks in his hands/wrists while I had my own hand and wrist in a cast.  And this morning, I'm thinking of all of those stories of Christ after resurrection, when showing the nail marks established his authenticity.

I'm thinking there should be a poem in all of this.    

Last Visit to the Hand Surgeon

Yesterday I went to the hand surgeon to get my green cast removed. They took another set of X rays, and the surgeon looked them over. The news is good. Bone has grown across the screws that connect the plate to the bone. In the X rays taken four weeks ago I could see the screws, and yesterday, they were not visible in the X rays.

I left the office with my hand and wrist in a soft splint, a removable splint, with the reassurance from the surgeon that I could soon do everything I once did. I need to not lift anything heavier than five pounds for the next week, but then I can go at my own pace.

Of course, I will need physical therapy. I left with two prescriptions:  one for South Florida, and one for the next place where we move.  With luck, I will not see the hand surgeon again, as he will be on vacation in the first part of July, and I will be moving in the later part of July.

I had been a little nervous about this visit. Four weeks ago, when the purple cast was removed, the site of my stitches was a little soggy.  The hand surgeon asked if I had gotten it wet, and I hadn't, but I had gotten a little sweaty. I live in South Florida after all. The hand surgeon said there was no sign of infection, so no need to worry, but of course I worried a bit. I'm happy that it looked OK yesterday.

I am also happy to have soft splint to cover up the scar from where my stitches were. It's still fairly scabby and ugly. I'll wear this splint when I go to lunch with people. No need to gross them out.

I left the doctor's office feeling fortunate. I have often said that if this had happened to me in 1885, I would be completely out of luck:  a female with a non-functioning dominant hand.  Happily, it's 2022, and my hand surgeon had skills needed to fix my fairly complicated break.

I have been thinking about how the bones of our bodies can grow again, about how they know where to grow and when to stop. I asked my spouse if he remembered from our high school health or biology classes anything about bones and how they know. My philosopher spouse told me that he objected to the premise of the question, that bones can't really know anything in an ontological way. In some ways, we see the world so differently--but not incompatibly.

I have also been thinking about the woman that I saw in the waiting room when I left after getting my purple cast on, back in May. That woman had a cast on both arms, and I thought about how tough it would be to break both wrists. I've been grateful for my spouse’s help, which makes me think about all the people who don't have any help. I've been grateful for decentish health insurance, and I've been oddly grateful that I don't have to be navigating all of these doctors appointments with a full time job.

At some point, I will get back to walking further. I've had to limit myself because of not wanting to sweat into a cast and because for much of the month of May, I had an adverse reaction to the antibiotics, which meant my walks had to be shorter, so that I wasn't too far away from the bathroom; happily that reaction seems to have gone away now.

Let me get out for a walk now, before my physical therapy appointment and before the sun gets much higher in the sky. I don't have a cast to worry about now, but I still like getting my walk done early, when there's any hope of less intense heat.

Back to Southern

On Tuesday, I will head back up I 95 and eventually end up in Columbia SC at Southern Seminary. Even though I finished my certificate in spiritual direction back in January, we've all been invited back to have an alumni experience. I don't know if we'll get this invitation every time; we got it this time, in part, because we had had so few on ground intensive because of the pandemic.

In January, I spent some time thinking about how much had changed in the two years since I had last been to campus. This morning I am thinking of how much has changed in the last five and a half months since I've been to campus. Most of the changes will be for the better in the long run, I think (and hope). But it is an astonishing amount of change in just a few months.

In early January, I still had a full-time job with the reason to think that the job would be ending. A month later that job had ended. In early January, I still owned a house in a flood zone, although I was hopeful that I was about to sell it. Indeed I did come back and sell the house just before losing my job. In early January, I still had not taken my second semester of seminary classes, and now I have. Happily, I am still enjoying them.

The most unexpected change is my spouse‘s outlook.  Back in January, I assumed he would never consider leaving Florida. He might want to move a bit north in Florida, but he had repeatedly told me he never wanted to leave. And now his mood is different. While he will still feel sad about leaving, the cheaper cost of living in other states is more attractive than the more expensive warmer weather of Florida.  We've spent the last several months thinking about dozens of possible housing adventures. In the next few weeks, as our plans solidify, I'll say more about the next housing adventure which will not be in Florida.

The weather forecast for Columbia SC for this week reminds me that South Florida summers are fairly mild. I am leaving daytime highs of 92 for daytime highs of 106. Of course the times that the warm weather in South Florida bothered me most was in October, when it was still 92 in the daytime, or February, which has more very warm days than cool days.

Let me wrap up this blog post so I can finish some packing for the trip ahead and continue packing for the larger adventure ahead.

Leaving the Land of the Mango Trees

It's one of those mornings where I am still tired. I have been fighting off a cold, and I think I'm coming out the other side. I have been sorting and packing for days and weeks now, and there's still much to do. There was a reggae concert at the Arts Park last night, which lasted until 11, which meant half of the night was not a restful one. Let me collect a series of impressions and see if there's a thread that runs through them.

--I have been moving some items out of plastic bins into cardboard boxes.  I had moved them out of boxes into plastic bins when I thought through the implications of living in a flood zone.  I am so glad to be leaving this flood zone.

--Yesterday I tried to go ahead and reserve a moving van for our end of summer relocation. I had forgotten how much it costs to move across states, and my spouse pointed out that's not even including the gasoline, which is hitting all time high prices. I know this is why we keep money in the bank, but I'd rather have that money for other things.

--I am also resenting all the copays that I have to pay in my journey to restore function to my hand and wrist. I am keeping track of our medical spending--this year we're earning so little that it might actually be a tax deduction.

--I am trying to remember how it could all be worse. We might not have the money. We might not have the insurance. I could be suffering from a much more serious medical condition instead of one that will have an end. We could be stuck here because we couldn't afford to move. I do realize that my whininess is from a place of privilege, and I am using it to remind myself of all the systemic injustice and how much work there is still to do, so that more people have these rather basic privileges of health care and the means to relocate towards a better life. So much work still to do.

--let me move away from whining by noting some progress in my hand restoration. Yesterday I was able to write with my right hand. I didn't write much, but it was more legible than what my left hand produces.  I feel like my writing with my left hand is a preview of the writing I will do when I'm a little old lady:  spidery and tentative.

--I got my first unemployment check, just 4 months after beginning the process.  Here, too, I recognize my privilege:  I have time and resources, like a computer at home, that enabled me to be tenacious.

--Because I spent yesterday researching moving trucks, I am now being bombarded with ads for movers who would like to move us. I wonder how much that would cost.

--We are also considering just getting rid of most furniture and mattresses and replacing them on the other end.

--I also did some writing on the computer and came up with part of a poem that I like. Let me close by posting a few lines from that poem:

I will not vote on the path to the future

for others to follow.

I buy a ticket for passage

on the last boat that swims to the monastery.

I will not be here to see the mangoes ripen.

 

Of Sex Pistols and Weather Systems

--As I begin this blog post, I'm waiting for the 5 a.m. update from the National Hurricane Center.  Will the remnants of Pacific hurricane Agatha reassemble into Atlantic Alex or just stay a messy blob?  It is June 1--the start of hurricane season.  I am happy not to be a South Florida homeowner.

--I am traveling a lot this summer, so hurricane season will offer a different set of anxieties.  They are lesser anxieties, but they are still there.

--My other set of anxieties:  am I navigating the state of Florida's unemployment system properly?  Yesterday I made it further than I ever have before.  Will it translate into money?  Stay tuned . . .

--Part of what I have to do to get my unemployment check is to apply for jobs, five applications per week. Yesterday I applied for all five in one afternoon. My spouse asked what would happen if I got an offer, but we are a long way from that.

 --We watched half of the Hulu series Pistol last night. It was oddly compelling even though I know where this story is headed. I suspect we have seen the most joyful part of the story, where people are just learning how to commandeer their instruments, and they are full of hopes and dreams.  Later they will become the Sex Pistols, and it's all just downhill from there.

 --I love seeing the pop culture references of the 70s, even though I was a child at the time of the events of this show. It's interesting to see all of those communities swirling around each other. If I was more in tune with my own time, would I see lots of different communities in the pop culture landscape or is it far more homogenized these days? I feel like it's more homogenized, but then again I don't get out a whole lot.

--There have been several times in the past two weeks where I have felt like my hair look like the David Bowie hair of the mid-1970s. Back in the day, I would not have been able to get my hair to look like that on purpose. Who knew that the secret to fashionable hair designs was to use one’s non-dominant hand and a blow dryer to style one’s hair?

 --Time to get ready for my appointment with the hand physical therapist. Some weeks I've become a prematurely old person, only leaving the house for doctors appointments. But I know busier days are coming, and there's still lots of packing to do. Time to start making some progress while keeping an eye on the weather systems.

Wrist Surgeon, Unemployment, and All the Platforms that Make Me Anxious

I woke up today sore in strange places--or perhaps it is more accurate to say sore in places that once would have been strange. My wrist hurts my feet hurt both shoulders and upper arms ache. Is it because I went to the wrist doctor yesterday?

The trip to the wrist doctor took much of the morning. There was the drive out there in rush hour traffic, which reminds me of why I grow weary of South Florida. The cast on my wrist needed to be removed so that the stitches could come out, and that removal required a saw, a cracking tool, and scissors. I didn't watch that process, and once the cast was off, I did not look at the site of my stitches.

I also did not watch the hand surgeon take the stitches out of my wrist. My enthusiastic flesh had started to grow back over the stitches, but the removal of them just felt strange and prickly, not painful. We looked at x-rays of my wrist, which is healing nicely. But the bone hasn't grown back entirely, so I'm in a cast until June 22.  I could have had it removed on the 15th except that I'm out of town.

I drove back home and gave myself some time to recover. I'm not sure why my visits to the hand surgeon leave me so wiped out, but they do. There's something about the hand surgeon that makes me more anxious then just going to the hand therapist. But happily, yesterday's visit was positive. While I still do not have full finger movement/mobility, the hand surgeon is happy with the progress that I'm making.

One of the drawbacks of having a cast on my lower arm is that people share their broken wrist stories with me. At first it was comforting do you realize how many people have had this experience. But it's also hard to move through the world knowing how vulnerable we all are.  I've always known that on a theoretical level, but lately it's felt much more visceral.

I could have sorted books yesterday afternoon, but I wanted to go back to the unemployment benefits website. I know that if they request information, I only have two weeks maximum to get that information to them. It took me about a half hour to get to the right screen where I found out that they did need more information, information I had already given them several times before.  But I'll play along--I entered it again.

The unemployment benefits website is built on a platform that uses 1980's technology, so giving more information is clunky and time-consuming--will I ever actually get any money? That remains to be seen.  In the meantime there is sorting to do and packing to do, and it's time to begin the day's work.

Registrations of All Sorts

Yesterday was one of those days when technology worked, but also when it didn't.  I got registered for Fall 2022 classes for seminary.  It was rather unremarkable, in some ways.  Back in grad school in the 1990's, when I first started, we first had online registration during my last year of classes, and I set my alarm so that I could be ready to register just after midnight when registration opened to everyone.  I wanted to be sure I got a seat.

Yesterday, I registered in a calmer way, at 8:30, and for all but 1 class, I was the first one to claim a seat.  I will take the first part of Church History, Pastoral Care and Counseling in Contexts, and Foundations of Preaching. I will also take Creative Process as Spiritual Practice (yes, that's my heart you hear singing) and Leading Innovation in the Church. There are so many good classes that it's hard to choose--what a delightful problem!

I will take 2 of my classes virtually, by way of Zoom session, Monday night and Tuesday afternoon.  I will have a Tuesday night class, a Thursday afternoon class, and a Thursday night class, which will be face to face.  I do wonder if I should take one more class, but I don't want to be so overworked that I can't enjoy them or enjoy D.C.  So I will probably stick with those classes.

I got registered and did some grading for the online classes that I'm teaching; I'm underemployed, but not unemployed.  Again, technology worked as it should.  I realized that I hadn't heard about my unemployment benefits, even though I applied over a month ago, so I logged on to see what was going on.

My case is listed as pending, which it has been since I filed.  I looked around the site, and as in the past, I found no information.  I decided to call.  And thus, technology failed me.  I was bounced from recorded voice to recorded voice, before being disconnected.  The instructional videos showed me views of screens and dashboards that I could never find.  I was told that my account had been disabled because I tried to log on too many times, but it let me log on again from a new screen.

Finally, I gave up, which is what the state of Florida hopes I will do.  I will keep trying.  I am lucky--I have resources of all sorts.  What would happen if I didn't?

I know what would happen.  I have heard the horrible stories.

This morning I realized that I had gotten so snarled up in the "re-employment assistance" hell that I didn't go to my lectio divina session.  My New Testament professor offered us extra credit for attending, and so I signed up.  In some ways, if I had to miss an appointment, at least it was that one, since it's a come as you can appointment.  I missed an earlier session of lectio a few weeks ago, so I've probably already forfeited the 2 points.  Still it irked me to be consumed with something so soul draining when I could have spent time with the lectio group.  Sigh.

My spouse came home from his on-campus requirement, and we looked online at some properties in South Carolina again.  We have a variety of possible approaches to investing the profits from our home sale, and buying a house within commuting distance of LTSS, the seminary in Columbia, where I am likely to have to do a Lutheran year when I'm done at Wesley.

And then we disconnected from technology altogether, joining good friends who once lived in the neighborhood, for wine and cheese.  It was one of the perfect outdoor nights that we so rarely get here, and we decided to enjoy time in their backyard, instead of going out.

On the Feast Day of Archbishop Romero

Today I have many things swirling in my brain; let me capture a few of them.

--Today is the feast day of Archbishop Romero.  For a more focused discussion on his life and why he's still relevant, see this post on my theology page.  I made this collage card more than a few years ago now.  When I made it, it seemed impossible that he would ever be made a saint.  Wow.

--I was happy to be able to "attend" the Romero lecture at my seminary--ah, the wonders of technology. And now, you can too, at the Wesley Theological Seminary You Tube page here.  Dr. Debora Agra Junker presented a compelling talk entitled "Collective Indignation-Imagination: The Prophetic Duty of Our Times." 

--I was sad to hear that Madeleine Albright died--what an amazing brain she had.  As I read this appreciation of her work in The Washington Post, I thought about what a different world we would have if more leaders had listened to her along the way.

--I was happy to hear that the Violence Against Women act was re-authorized.  Finally!  I realize the money was still being spent on these programs, but I'm happy for the official recognition.  Similarly, I'm glad that Congress passed legislation to make lynching an official crime--how hard can this be?  

--Today I will write a poem that begins this way:  On the feast day of Archbishop Romero, she feeds the cats.  I am hoping to write a poem that makes important connections.  We shall see.

--My poetry brain feels a bit shriveled.  I need to get back to writing more poetry.  I'm not doing much in the way of submissions either.  That process has gotten expensive and feels increasingly futile.

--It's also strange to hear about so many people heading to Philadelphia for the AWP convention that starts today.  At one point, I thought I might be living in D.C., where it would be easy to go in terms of travel--no plane.  But it's still a lot of money for the hotel, and we're still in a pandemic, where I thought lots of stuff might be cancelled.  And did I mention how much money it is?  I'm taking that money and going to several retreats, which will likely feed my soul in different and important ways.

--Yesterday, instead of travelling to Philadelphia, I spent hours on the phone this morning sorting out COBRA health insurance issues. Happily I was able to get the issues sorted out to restore our dental insurance--and I got our rental condo vacuumed while I was on hold.

--I want to make note of an encounter in my church's parking lot last night.  I was there to pick my spouse up after he went to choir rehearsal, and I grabbed a quick dinner with a friend and former student.  One of our church friends who also sang with my spouse in the Broward Chorale.  She wanted to tell me again about how moving my sermon was, how she continued to think about it, which was rare for her.  I preached that sermon on March 13, and it didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked, so I was grateful for praise last night.  It's really easy for me to get in a negative spiral when I had the perfect sermon in my head (and on paper--see this blog post for an idea of what I thought the sermon would be).  It's good to remember that even an imperfect sermon (and they're all imperfect) can be powerful.

--And today, it's time to get some food in the house.  Let me head off to get this done early, before the crowds arrive.

Ups, Downs, and a Hand Crafted Magazine

Yesterday was an up and down and up again kind of day.  In retrospect, I probably should have tried to get more sleep.  Much of the down part of the day was probably a result of tiredness from not getting to bed until 2 a.m. the night before.

We had to get up because my spouse had a dental appointment, the first with our insurance by way of COBRA now.  He took the new information and headed to the dentist, and when he didn't return, I assumed everything was fine.

Sadly, no.  I'm still not sure what exactly is wrong, but I'll spend some time on the phone this morning to try to get it sorted out.

I had been in a strange mood of self-castigation about losing my job.  It's a strange mood, because I'm not exactly sure what happened, so it's really strange to hear my self-talk full of criticism of me.  I'm good at recognizing it and dismissing it, but not so good at not letting my brain wander there.

While my spouse was at the dentist, I went to the Wesley Theological Seminary website, and I realized that the Fall schedule of classes was posted.  I spent an hour both pleasant and scary, looking at what was available, going to various parts of the website to remind myself of what's required, second guessing myself about choosing to go this seminary route, and finishing with a bit of panic when I couldn't find the web page that gave details about the specialization in Theology and the Arts.  Could the school have ended it?  Round and round my brain went.

By afternoon, I told my brain that we had to get some progress made on the exegesis midterm for my New Testament class that was due at midnight.  I settled in and herded my thoughts to school work.  And then, my thoughts shifted as I made progress.  I spent the afternoon looking deeply at 1 Corinthians 11:  17-34, reading back over course notes and textbooks, writing and revising.  It was delightful.

In the middle of the afternoon, there was a knock on the door, which almost never happens, since we have a desk where visitors must check in downstairs.  I opened the door to find two pre-teen girls.  They weren't unfamiliar to me--when the game room downstairs first opened, one night we took turns playing pool, ping pong, foos ball, and Pacman.  I see them around the building and the courtyard; they're usually on some sort of wheels, scooters, skates, and the like.

It took me a few minutes to figure out why they knocked on my door.  At first I thought they were selling magazine subscriptions, but they didn't carry the paperwork pouch that those student salesforces usually do.  Come to find out, they were taking orders for magazines they planned to make.  They would return with my magazine and I would owe them anything from one dollar to three dollars.

What a deal!  I requested a magazine that had to do with food or recipes.  And last night, they returned:

I am so enchanted!  The recipes don't really work, but of course, I don't need recipes.

I'd love to know what other residents ordered.  Did they get delightful illustrations too?

I don't know what delighted me most:  the entrepreneurial spirit, the handmade magazines, the can-do attitude, the enthusiasm?  Yes to all of those.

It also took me back to my childhood, where I would create The Berkey Bulletin, make copies, and mail them to my relatives who had subscribed.  I loved every part of the process.

By evening, my up and down mood of the day was up again.  I turned in my midterm exegesis and went to bed, grateful for all the ways my day had turned out to be a good one.

Homecomings

Today I pack up my stuff and head home--which makes me think about the whole idea of home.  Let me collect some odds and ends here:

--First of all, let me acknowledge how discombobulating it is to be thinking of "home" as a concept when we're in a time of huge dislocation for so many people.  As much as 25% of the population of Ukraine may be displaced, for example.  And although Ukraine is getting much of our attention right now, it's hardly the only refugee issue.

--I can't remember where I read the story of the Ukrainian woman who was on a business trip in a non-Ukrainian European city when Putin invaded.  She has at least one child in Ukraine, and she can't get back.  I've thought of her often and wondered how she's doing, and more specifically, what she's doing.  Did she pack the right kind of clothes?  The clothes we need for a business trip can be so different than the clothes we would need for regular life, and those clothes may be different than the clothes we would need as refugees.  How long was the business trip?  Can she access her money?  Can she get in touch with family in Ukraine?  Is she still employed?

--Her story is not what made me pack such a large suitcase.  I'm flying Southwest, so I can check a bag for free.  I brought clothes for lounging, clothes for church, clothes for cold weather (but no coat), and clothes for warm weather.  If I stayed here a day longer, I'd need to wash a load of socks.

--My parents moved to their current home in 2011.  They're in a continuing care retirement community, the kind of place where one can live in a separate house or an apartment or a room with more care, and there's a memory care unit where those with Alzheimer's won't wander away.  When I visit, I stay in a hotel-like room in the apartment building.  There's no wi-fi in the apartment, so I spend early mornings in the library downstairs.  There's a coffee machine in Archie's Tavern across from the library, and I drink latte after latte each morning.

--I will miss this routine.

--Because my parents moved a lot when I was young, I don't feel like I had an ancestral home, so there's not that sense of loss.  But they've lived here long enough that it does feel like a homecoming when I visit.

--I have been impressed with how all the residents here in my parents' community make their homes their own.  While I was here, in the apartment unit building, on the 5th floor, the St. Patrick's decorations got exchanged for Easter eggs and bunnies.  My parents' housing area has lovely garden spots and a wide variety of bird feeders and bird houses.

--From my parents' neighbor, I learned that chickadees make their nests out of moss, wrens out of sticks, and bluebirds out of pine straw.  It seems that there should be a poem out of all these images of nests and refugees and travel, but I worry it would seem trite in the face of the serious subject matter.

--I will be returning to our rented condo, a place that both feels like home, but is extremely temporary.  And it is strange to reflect how many of my South Florida friends have moved away and how different life in South Florida is.

--It's strange to be in a different place.  I haven't been sleeping well, and I'm not sure why.  I woke up yesterday thinking about the fact that my full-time job let me go without a real explanation.  From an HR standpoint, I understand why they didn't give me details.  From a Kristin perspective, it means I don't have closure, and my curious brain keeps wondering what happened.  I wasn't fired, exactly--I wasn't let go for cause, which means I can still get unemployment.  So it wasn't exactly my fault, but I can't really be sure, can I?

--This trip begins my 5 weeks of intense travel, which wouldn't be possible if I still had that job.  I've got 3 retreats planned between now and the end of April.

--I saw the Holy Week schedule for my home church, and I thought about the fact that my seminary gives us an Easter break.  I thought, well of course they do; so many of us are employed by churches, so we need to be available for Maundy Thursday onward to Easter Sunday.  That fact makes me feel a sense of homecoming in a different way.  No more sneaking away to Holy Week services!

--And now it's time for me to return to my room to put everything back in my suitcase--I'll spend the next 5 weeks taking these same clothes, or variations of them, in and out of this suitcase.  Then I'll head to my parents' independent living unit, where I'll have breakfast with my folks, my sister, and my sister's dog.

--Soon I hope to be living closer, as I do seminary work on campus in person in DC this fall.  That will be yet another homecoming, that is both a homecoming by traditional definition, and so much more.  

--I hope it means I can see my family more often and have this kind of homecoming too.

Travel, School, Life: The Same and Yet Different

Here I sit in Williamsburg where my parents live, working on my computer, after a plane trip yesterday.  Once that sentence would not be remarkable.  But at certain points yesterday, I shook my head at how events were both strange and familiar.

I haven't taken a plane trip in 2 years.  In some ways, not much is different, although yesterday it seemed like more people were in the Ft. Lauderdale and Atlanta airports.  Yesterday, as I waited in the very long security line at 4 a.m., I laughed at the Kristin who thought the airport would be deserted at that very early morning hour.  Lots of people were returning from cruises, to judge from conversations I overheard, including lots of college students.  What a different spring break life I had as a student, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I was happy to return home to my own bed and my bread baking equipment.

A major difference, of course, is the masks we all wore, some of us more correctly than others.  I was happily surprised that most people had something around their faces on the plane and in the airport once we got past the security line.  In the security line, all bets were off.  I thought of the crowds on Monday night as we walked to a restaurant and how I worried I might have been exposed to disease that I would bring to my parents.  Monday was the least of my worries as it turns out.  But I still felt relatively safe during yesterday's travel which may say more about my faith in vaccines, booster shots, and my own mask than it says about the accuracy of my safe feelings.

Although the flights and the airports were packed, yesterday's airplane experience was fairly easy.  There was a moment when we landed in Atlanta, where the full moon was setting and the fog was intensifying.  In some ways, it felt like we had landed on an alien planet, as the plane rumbled into the parking spot.  I thought I might end up stuck in Atlanta until the sun burned off the fog, but my layover was several hours, so it wasn't a problem.

I was traveling alone, so I used the time to get lost in a book, Jonathan Franzen's latest, Crossroads.  I understand all the reasons why people don't like him, but he knows how to spin a compelling story, and this one has the best elements of The Corrections, a book which thrilled me.  I'm not done yet, but I'm happy to be reading it.

The Richmond airport was comparatively empty, which was a relief, and I had no trouble getting my bag and hopping into my parents' car.  And then we were off, back to Williamsburg.  If I hadn't known that the temperature outside was in the 50's, I'd have thought that a snowstorm was blowing in.  Even with dark clouds, the rain held off.

We relaxed for a bit, made dinner, and then I was off--back to my parents' study, where I logged on to my seminary class.  What an amazing world we live in!

This morning, I'm thinking back to the last time that I was here, in January of 2019, and my plan was to return several times a year in a more concerted effort to see my parents more often while they are still in the healthy part of old age.  While I've always been aware of apocalyptic possibilities, I would not have anticipated a global pandemic disrupting my plans, along with all the plans of all of us.  Sigh.

And now we're looking at a variety of possible plan interruptions:  a new variation of this virus, a brutal invasion of Ukraine, chief among them. And then there's my own individual disrupters:  job loss, house sale, S. Florida becoming increasingly unaffordable.

Earlier this week, I woke up feeling a bit panicked about money--my last paycheck from my old job was March 15.  But I'm trying not to linger long in that panic.  Similarly, as I walked through the Richmond airport, I thought, we should have moved years ago--but we don't have a time machine to go back, so that line of thinking isn't useful.

There are days when I worry that I'm diving off a dangerous precipice by pursuing my seminary dreams.  But then I go to class, and I am so thrilled to have this opportunity.  I choose to see that through an Ignatian lens:  seminary is a space of consolation, and worrying about money while I have house sale profits in the bank is a space of desolation. 

Let me continue to move towards consolation.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

If all has gone well, by the time this piece of writing posts on my blog at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 17, I'll be on a plane that will be leaving the gate. My spouse is still at home.  When I made plans to go to my mom and dad's for her birthday, he was scheduled to teach more classes which have since been canceled.  And truth be told, he still has plenty of work to do, and leaving him at home meant that I can be gone a bit longer.

None of this would be possible if I hadn't been downsized.  The week-end after being told that my old bosses would be going their separate way from me, I found great plane tickets and made the decision.  A few weeks later, Putin would invade Ukraine, and I'll be surprised if we ever see such cheap airfare again in the next few months.

When I was at AWP in San Antonio in 2020, I saw great rates and booked a ticket to go up to celebrate my mom's birthday.  I knew that there were all sorts of rumblings about this new disease, but I was booking the ticket just 2 weeks in advance.  Surely the situation couldn't change that quickly, could it?

It could, and it did.  The ticket only cost $100, and I got a 2 year extension.  But I'm not using that ticket.  Since then, the airline has changed so much that it's easier to just give up the money and get a cheaper fare on a different airline.  And the real truth is that I didn't have the fortitude to deal with being on the phone to find out what how to find and use that ticket that I bought in 2020, as the online system wasn't recognizing me.

It's strange to think that I haven't been on a plane in 2 years.  I've gotten out of practice.  At one point, I could have packed for a trip in about 10 minutes.  I had a separate set of travel size cosmetics.  I knew which restaurants in which airports I hoped to find open and what food I hoped to buy there.

Now I mainly hope that my fellow passengers are healthy and masked.  I've always hoped for the health of fellow passengers, but it's different this year.  This year, I'm also hoping that everyone is vaccinated and in a calm mood.

Time for Writing, Time for Travel

Most days I would have already been out walking, watching the early parts of sunrise.  Today, the first day of daylight savings time when a cold front has blown through, it is dark outside, and I'm staying put for a bit.  My spouse was up late, so he'll be sleeping for a bit longer.  Let me see if I can get some writing done.

I wish I had an idea for a poem, or ideas that seem to be coalescing enough that I reach for my poetry notebook.  But that is not my plan for this morning.

I have a variety of seminary class discussion posts that I need to get ready to post in the next 24 hours.  Some of them are already at rough draft stage, so I just need to revise them and figure out how to conclude them.

I am about to enter a different phase of being a seminary student.  In the fall, I began as a seminary student with a full-time administrator job plus a part-time teaching job.  Since early February, I've been a seminary student with a part-time teaching job.  Two of those classes just ended, but one more has started.  I am about to start travelling for the next five weeks, so in some ways, I've got more balancing to do.

But I'll be travelling to places where I'm expecting to be able to find wi-fi, so I can still get my seminary work done.  I continue to be amazed at how easy it is to access secondary sources from the seminary library.  Much has changed since the first time I was in grad school from 1987-1992.  

I am enjoying this time of underemployment when it has become possible to immerse myself in seminary studies and travel in a way that I couldn't have if still employed in my administrator job.  I didn't have enough vacation time, and I never would.

I am not doing non-seminary writing and submitting in the way that I would like.  But I've had times of less creative writing before, and I know that fallow times are normal.  And I am still writing.  It may not be writing that will lead to publication, but my poetry/fiction writing often doesn't lead to publication either.

All writing keeps us in practice, keeps us noticing, keeps us prioritizing writing.  Let me turn my attention to writing that is due in the next 24-48 hours.

The Fourth Week of Underemployment Begins

Three weeks ago, I awakened to my first Monday of underemployment.  The world has changed radically since then, or maybe it hasn't.  It is hard to know.  Let me collect a few snapshots here.

--I am still adjusting to the idea that my schedule has a lot more flexibility than it once did.  I continue to think about the balance of writing, walking, and other practices that make up the best morning.  I am also aware that it may change in 2 weeks when we go back to Daylight Savings Time.

--Similarly, I am thinking about more travel than I once would have, back when I had to consider how much vacation time I had accrued.  One of my church friends asked me if I had considered going to the God Spa retreat.  I am now considering it.

--My replacement arrives today at my former campus, just a month before the accreditors come for a big visit.  When I took the job that brought me to my former campus, we had just a month to get various accreditation documents ready, but that was a much easier task than getting a campus ready for a visit.  I wish her luck; she will need it, but she might not realize that she needs it.  She's coming from a University of Phoenix campus, so she won't have had experience with the accreditors that will be coming at the end of March.

--This is also the week where lots of people on the academic side will be moving into and out of offices at my old campus--or at least, that was the plan when I left.  I don't miss that aspect of campus life.

--Over the week-end, I signed a publishing contract for one of my essays to appear in a book of essays about assembling poetry manuscripts.  It has been so long since the initial acceptance that I assumed that the project had fallen apart.  What a pleasant surprise to realize that it has not.

--Whenever I get this kind of news, I wonder if I should be doing more to attend to my poetry career, such as it is.  But then I look at various submission guidelines and feel that jolt of shock at submission fees.  I saw one journal this week-end, one that was fairly new, charging $5.00 to submit.  Nope--not doing that unless you're a journal where an acceptance might actually further a poetry career.

--And even then, part of me has to laugh at the idea of a poetry career.  I don't think anyone is making a living off of their poetry book sales.  Even poet laureates have teaching jobs.

--And yes, I do understand the precarious economics of literary magazines.  I do not feel called to underwrite those economics with my poetry submissions, but I am not criticizing those that decide to play that particular lottery/game.

--I came across this article in The New York Times yesterday, an essay that looks at these developments in Ukraine through the lens of 80's popular culture.  It calls the coverage the worst kind of nostalgia programming:  "There was the buildup of tensions over a supposed “military exercise,” the scenario that opened “The Day After” in 1983. There were the columns of tanks, an image out of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Soviet newsreels and the 1984 movie “Red Dawn.” There were the maps of Europe, with arrows diagraming pincer attacks and fire-red explosion graphics."

--That article ends this way:  

"You could see this as evidence that we were still living in the same world that we lived in last week. You could assure yourself that this did not fit the apocalypse-film script, that this was not, in the end, 'The Day After.'

You might also remember, though, that that is exactly the sort of thing someone always says in the first 15 minutes of the disaster movie."

--Here's hoping that we can back away from this brink in the way that a pop culture movie script would not.

Ponderings on Presidents Day

Some assorting ponderings on Presidents Day--will they hold together as a post?  Yes.  As an extended essay?  Probably not, hence the format.

--While I like having less traffic on a Monday morning walk, I feel this odd resentment.  As an underemployed person, if everyone has a work day off, one of the benefits of underemployment seems to disappear.  Happily it will return tomorrow.

--Does this Ukraine tension underscore the need for strong presidential leadership or show the futility of wishing for it?

--Anne Applebaum's essay headline in The Atlantic sums up Ukraine nicely (accurately?):  "There Are No Chamberlains in this Story:  But there are no Churchills, either. And Ukraine will fight alone."  The bleakness of this headline makes me feel a piercing sorrow.  You can read the whole essay here.

--Why would any gathering of foreign leaders happen in Munich ever again?  The symbolism and the optics seem impossibly bad.  Of course, that might change, depending on if this week-end's meeting accomplishes something we can't see right now.

--The older I get, the more I realize that people in leadership positions are by and large, just regular folks, thrust into leadership position.  Maybe they have special skills.  Maybe they will rise to the occasion.  Maybe not.

--I understand why we want a president who will save us.  But viewed one way, there have been very few political leaders who were able to pull that off. 

--It's more likely that history will be made by groups of ordinary people, people not in charge on a national level, people making change on a regular basis.

--And we'll only remember if we have people who are writing it all down and/or recording those efforts in some way.

The Unemployment Benefits Application Process

I did not plan to apply for unemployment benefits yesterday.  I planned to apply eventually, but I had plenty of time, since my last day of pay was Feb. 18.  But I finally got onto the website, so I decided to start the process just to see if it was as hard as I had heard.

I have never met anyone who said that the website was easy to navigate, and just to figure out which website was the actual one was no small thing.  In fact, I still wonder if I was in the right spot.

Applying for unemployment benefits wasn't as hard as verifying my identity.  I needed to upload pictures of my driver's license, and I tried with every camera in the house, including my computer camera, but I still got a "too blurry" message.  I needed to let my computer camera take a close up of my face, and I tried that several times.  Finally, the site decided I would need to have video call to verify my identity.

Would it have been easier if I had a smartphone to do all of this?  Maybe.  Would I have felt less secure using a smartphone?  Yes.

So, then I needed to upload the same documents in a different spot, which I did, and wait for a video call.  I waited ten minutes, and then got a message that I would get a follow up e-mail.  Twenty minutes later I got an e-mail that told me that I was now clear for the video call.  I clicked the button that took me to a waiting room, where I was told I would have a waiting time of an hour and 27 minutes, which is exactly the amount of time it took.

During this time I did some other tasks.  I got some grading done, the kind that doesn't take as much mental energy, like discussion posts.  I did not do seminary work, because I wasn't sure when I might be interrupted.  In retrospect, I could have done more, but the morning didn't feel like a total waste of time.

Finally, I got notice that my wait time was over.  I had five minutes to click on a button to start the video call.  Happily, I was at the computer at the time.  The video call went smoothly, and I was able to make my way back to the website where I was able to apply for unemployment.  

The actual application was fairly easy, especially since I had my tax documents in a pile beside my desk (getting taxes done is another one of my big projects).  I did finish the submission, but I do feel a bit uneasy because I didn't get a chance to do a final review.  I will keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.  And if I get turned down, I can appeal.

I had heard all sorts of reports about how the unemployment process in Florida is unnecessarily hard, and it's true.  There are no offices where one can get help.  One must have a computer.  The website is clunky.  The website didn't want to accept my documents, but maybe that was because every camera in my house was inadequate.  I know that I'm lucky in many ways:  I was applying in a slow time, and I have resources.  Plus, I have all my documents.  In fact, I had downloaded all my paystubs, just in case, but so far I haven't needed them.

Fingers crossed that I get the benefits I'm entitled to have, since I was let go through no fault of my own.  I didn't get much else done yesterday, since the process took from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., but getting that done felt like enough of an accomplishment for an overcast Saturday in February.

Transformations and Tiredness

Yesterday was one of those strange up and down days.  Here's a metaphor:  I made pumpkin butter, the full recipe, which means I have more pumpkin butter than I will eat over the next few weeks.  So I decided to transform some of it into pumpkin bread.  It was a decent experiment, edible, but missing something that I couldn't articulate.

I got some seminary work done yesterday, but I am never as far along as I would like to be.  There are always tasks that need to be done.

I managed to get access to the HR site where my pay stubs from my former full-time job are housed, and while I had the access, I decided to download them all.  That took a bit of time.  It will be valuable, when I apply for unemployment benefits.  But there was something mind numbing about it.

Similarly, in the early afternoon, I got information about married student housing at Wesley Theological Seminary, and I had a nice phone chat with the Director of Residence Life.  She sent a document that has pictures of a 1 bedroom apartment, and she said that in her 7 years of being in the Residence Life department, they've never had to turn students away.

The apartment looks about what I expected:  a bit spartan, with sturdy furniture like one might find in a dorm or at camp.  Our current furniture is a bit scruffy, so on the one hand, it won't be an adjustment.  On the other hand, it's a bit spartan.

I went to the Realtor.com site to see what other kinds of apartments are available in the seminary zip code.  As I suspected, the seminary is a good deal in terms of money.  It's a good deal because the apartments haven't been updated.  But it's not like I've spent a majority of my adult life in ultra sleek, modern versions of kitchens and bathrooms.

The process of seeing what's available in other apartments was draining in the way that internet searching can be.  There's something attractive about being on the campus, after all.  But getting an unfurnished apartment at Wesley is not an option.  I am happy to get rid of most of our furniture.  but we may want to keep enough of it that we would have storage costs or a cramped space.

My spouse and I ended the afternoon by playing Yahtzee on the balcony as the rain swept in and swept out and swept in again.  There was sadness at the thought of not having a balcony in DC.  There was happiness knowing that we no longer own a house in a flood zone.  There was tiredness, both the good kind and the less good kind.

Let me go for a walk and greet this new day.