In the two months since I hired on at a local newspaper my life has changed dramatically--not the kind of drama where I'm living in riches with all of my worries behind me. I would have to change my blog from adventures in poverty to my former adventures in poverty. And I haven't done that yet.
Six weeks after beginning my part-time position as an editorial assistant I was asked to move into a full-time position as a design liaison. I had zero newsroom experience before I went to work at the paper, so for the past two months I've been playing catch up on basic things that I'm sure high school journalism students know, as I try to learn everything possible without lowering the quality of the product we put out. I'm not very successful some days. Some mornings, I open the newspaper and proudly point out my favorite pages. Some mornings, I critically eye the paper--disappointed, noting what would make it better. I feel like I've been dropped into a foreign culture and I must learn by immersion.
I constantly struggle to meet the expectations of excellence. We have some of the best reporters in the state, so I don't want my work to detract from theirs.
I go to work in the afternoon and don't normally get home until after 11. I struggle everyday to get up and keep the kids on task during the week. The benefit of my work hours allow me to continue to homeschool the kids for now. Even as I struggle to get up in the mornings to keep them learning, I know that if they were in a brick and mortar school I would miss out on knowing them.
As for my knee, I try very hard to not rely on crutches for short distances since they are so cumbersome. By the end of the week, I usually have to revert to using them for everywhere but in my own small house. Plagued by constant and increasing pain, I spend the majority of my time off work housebound. The "at least," which is of little comfort when my eyes burn and threaten to overflow from frustration and pain, is that I am providing for my family.
With the move to full-time work I am eligible for health insurance. We are struggling to figure out the legalities of such a complicated insurance system. We have to know how much money we are going to make this year, in order to determine who in our family will be insured.
Its hard to know how much money we'll make if we don't know if my husband will continue as a consultant or if he will be hired by another company. If he can be covered by a different insurance, my company won't cover him. If we don't buy him insurance the government may penalize us for not buying on the exchange. But if our income is only mine and what he might bring in with similar consulting income as last year, he would be penalized for being poor. Or if he gets a big project that would help us get out of this hellish poverty, he'll get penalized for making too much money.
None of it matters right now. The HR department was so kind as to admit that they were"dragging their feet" in getting my changes into the system, two weeks after I accepted the new position. So now the race is on to figure out insurance and sign up before I hit my 30-day limit of eligibility, which started the day I took the new position.
Life is just as complicated and difficult as before. I think that's the biggest disappointment. I had hoped that a full-time job would simplify and better our lives. I still live in constant pain. I still lose sleep over the complexity of survival.
