Feeling Marginalized this Morning

So, why not bail everybody out?

Reading about the proposed 700 billion financial bailout, and wondering how I might also get a bailout. I don't need 700 billion. Heck, I don't even need 1 billion, or any number even close to that. How many people are in similar situations that could be fixed for relatively small change?

I knew I shouldn't have taken that job. I knew it was headed for the outsourcer's pocket, but I needed it, and it paid well, and I was good at it. And I was over 40. It had an office with a window, and congenial workmates. And things were okay until the outsourcing happened.

Then we were competing directly with our third-world counterparts. ("Oh, you still have a job--but you have to work cheaper than the Indians.") The only problem there was that I didn't live in the third world, and my cost of living was vastly higher. As a "contractor" my income fell to 30% of what it had been, and my overhead was soaring. IT issues suddenly became my cost burden, leaving me working for as little as $1.00/hr at times.

When heating oil got to $2.00/gal, I turned off the heat and bundled up. It was February. Of course, we're a lot further down the road now. Now, $2.00/gal looks good.

I don't know what the cost of heating oil per gallon is these days because I got the brainy idea to move to a place where I would be able to live on what I was now making. I was by this time working on VPN from home, on my own equipment, with my own (ka-ching) internet connection, utilities, etc., struggling with providing my own IT support.

I visited my youngest now-grown son, living on an island in the Caribbean and saw what I thought was a way to make lemonade out of lemons. I bought a laptop on eBay and set up an office there, attempting to use the microwave internet connection then newly available. There was a latency issue, but it seemed there was some wiggle room. I had just spent a decade or more devising work-arounds for buggy poorly advised technology purchases by employers. I was really good at it.

I didn't have enough money saved to retire--ever--but I did have enough to move.

Further, I really didn't want to move to India, and this seemed a good alternative. I had family here, and it definitely wasn't cold. All I needed was a good internet connection. So, it seemed.

The bottom line was that there are known latency issues with VPN that would make it damn near impossible to work--as opposed to practically impossible up north. I say "known latency issues", but these were never acknowledged by my employer who kept insisting "it's on your end."

I have come to know that "it's on your end," is standard IT talk for "we don't intend to deal with it."

My particular line of work tends to produce nerve damage after a while, and coupled with a fall in December, I was laid up with a bruised foraminal nerve. This is spectacularly painful--and now there was no such thing as sick days, disability leave, or even medical care. My employer decided I wasn't "producing enough" to justify their VPN license expense. Nevermind I had spent ten times that amount trying to accommodate their system from "my end."

I got the sayanora email--not even a phone call--on a day when I literally had to crawl to the computer in excruciating pain. It was actually a relief to receive, because I was definitely going to try to work in that condition.

And you know what--except for the money thing--I don't miss that job. The job outlook is not bright here. There are not many, and what jobs there are go to local folk first. The average income here is $9000/yr.

So, if they're bailing out folks, I could use an infusion of cash here too.

Hello?

I was just pitching to my friend that she should start blogging. I don't know if she will take my advice, but since my advice is usually pretty good, I decided to take it myself.

My pitch to my friend was based on my observation that a first-person voice from her quarter is absent on the web, and so she should start.

I am not exactly sure what "my quarter" is, but I'm very passionate about a variety of issues that do not appear on the regular radar, if at all, in a way that I think is properly presented.

So--here goes!