a thankless job

"Fuck my life, I want the credit" -- "Wag the Dog"

I know, dear readers, it's been about 6 weeks since I last posted, and a lot has happened since then, both in my life and in the world... but I want to talk about something from the end of July and now.

I left my previous job at the end of July. Because of the nature of the job, the nature of the blogosphere and my semi-nonimity, I decided to keep a lid on it here. Because of my work on Jewschool and the fact that I worked for a Jewish org, I didn't want their to be any conflict of interest, any appearance of conflict of interest, or even any damage to this organization because of my fairly large sized frustrations with it.

I left at the end of July; it was kinda like playing job no-limit holdem. I want to go to grad school and work 3/4 or half time. I raise your half time down to 1/5th time. I raise your 1/5 time to 2/5 time during the summer and 1/5th time starting in september. Oh, and raise you recruiting a professional with a serious degree, much higher payscale to begin asap and introducing him as such during a key conference happening while you're still full time. Fine, I raise another job that fell in my lap and starts beginning of august.

While this wasn't fought out with bitterness or yelling, perhaps because my boss sensed that we hadn't quite clicked as a unit, it was kind of tense. And I was asked, by my boss, to not let folks know that I was moving on just yet, to wait until things were in place with the new person. Okay, fine. my final act of not voicing my own position.

I left. No announcement of my departure. A week. No announcement. Two weeks. No Announcement. A month. No announcement, and not even a "good luck" on my new life. When do I finally hear from my boss? when he's upset that I haven't connected with my replacement.. except my replacement wants to meet in person during Tishrei while I work part time and take three grad classes. I'm not sleeping enough, already falling behind on the reading, and these guys want two hours of my time. I barely give Knucklehead two hours of my time at a time these days.

So on the left, we say our resource is the people. The right may have the money, but we have the people. I didn't sign up for social justice work to get rich. I just wanted to make a decent living that allows me to support my family and occasionally do something sweet. Now I don't quite feel how the Dustin Hoffman character from Wag the Dog felt, and besides, that sentiment got him killed. But some kind of recognition, a thank you, a something, would have been nice. We're supposed to be the people movement, and we don't even say thank you before we part ways.

maybe that's one of the reasons I'm shifting careers.