Write about when you were tarted unfairly. (Flashback to writing from 11/7/2013 where I was writing about what happened at the four-letter company)
Oh geez. Um, yeah, what happened to me in 2013 through about 2017 is pretty incredibly awful.
Coming on my trip, knowing that people where I am make extensive use of the dropout Ginger’s apps (read: Zuckerberg…Facebook/InstaGram/Meta). Scrolling suggestions, and I see the guy who was my boss at one of the bad stops; the one I left voluntarily.
Was I being reckless? Maybe. But my entire world had been thrown into chaos course a guy who’s, as far as I know, still in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison.
While that stint was pretty awful, it was led into by my stint at the four-letter company. My initial inclination when I got the way lowball job offer was to say, “add ten percent, and we’ll talk.” On advice, I accepted the really lowball offer. So less than 80% of what I’d been earning, in a position that wasn’t really suited to me, and in the office five days a week off of significant telework after I’d really chosen to stop driving.
I fully admit I was an asshole while I was there.
I admit I was drinking more than I should have. (But that was the only thing that was kinda sorta keeping my weight up….)
But after they moved me into, essentially what my previous position had been with no salary adjustment, I was pissed.
When the guy responsible reached his plea agreement, they set me adrift.
And, after mildly attempting to do the sort of thing that’s now widespread in the IT world about five years before it became widespread, I took yet another job that underpaid me. I took it to keep us housed, fed, and clothed.
The work wasn’t really my forte, but I had enough knowledge to be okay at it. When the more senior person they’d been trying to bring over to the new company fell through, I got promoted again…without a pay increase. Adding to the stress was that the company’s health insurance didn’t work where we lived, so I had to buy insurance through the Federal Exchange. That’s all after-tax income…so imagine your bills going up several hundred dollars a month. None of the specialists I’d been seeing accepted the Exchange plans, so I had to find new ones. Just as my disease modifying therapy had quit working. Good stuff. (I will say that the only bright spot out of that was it led me to come up to DC to volunteer myself as a test subject at Georgetown. (I can’t thank Dr. Amjad, and all the other folks at Georgetown who’ve really rebooted my life.). Maybe all the doctors in my past who were convinced I had mononucleosis mistreated me?
No. That’s a cop-out. I forgive them. I was diagnosed right at the median age of diagnosis for MS. I’m also a dude, which makes me half as likely to have the. condition.
For that, I had to live back at home with my mother during the week, and only see my wife on weekends.
Thank you to my mother for putting up with me during this time, and giving me rides to and from work because the short bus wouldn’t run to her house a bit more than a mile out of the service area.
Happy birthday, too, to my mom. That was part of my calculation for traveling when I did, so I could come and see her today. I’m writing this laying on the floor in her vacant brand new house that I’m trying to figure out what to do with (she’s in memory care, so she’s not living here….she’s got a permanent address there, and the little dog is with my wife and I….I was looking at doing short-term rentals with it, but I’m leaning towards just having all her stuff put in storage, and leasing it outright…)
The joint birthday party her family had over the weekend for her, and her dad, was great. I’m happy I got to go.
So sleepy time. Saints game tomorrow night, work on the house, and election night reax Tuesday.
And maybe I’ll quit hitting these a day early.