gains and losses
================

So my career has taken a rather hard pivot
lately.

There's a lot of reasons for that. Part of it
was just how exploitative the non-profit
scene was.

I was severely underpaid and by that I don't
mean "oh my pay rate was really low",
although it was, I mean "I had to fight tooth
and nail to get paid for even a fraction of
my hours and every cent of it was resented",
I mean "except for a couple of months my main
job running an educational profit was never
enough to even cover rent let alone other
bills"

But if it had only been the money I probably
could have stood it. I grew up poor.
Penny-pinching and doing without barely
even registers to me, honestly. 

No, it's also the disrespect, the
humiliation, the controllingness of my old
boss. He was getting meaner every time he
talked to me. Undermined me more. One of the
last straws was when we argued for like ten
minutes because he was so angry that I had
responded to a text with a text because I
should have known that he can send texts but
his phone won't receive them reliably. I wish
I was joking.

It felt like there wasn't anything he
wouldn't blame me for and, honestly, if you
know me well at all you're not going to be
surprised to hear that I'm largely a person
who thinks I deserve what I get.

But I grew really tired. So tired. You
shouldn't have to drink to numb yourself
after every time you talk to your boss. You
shouldn't have panic attacks in the night
because of the amount of work you have to get
done yet you can't even pay rent without
help.

Oddly enough, even this isn't why I left.

It was because at the beginning of this year
I saw something coming. If you're famliar
with american politics right now you might
have seen some of the mess around accusing
queer and trans people of "grooming" kids,
where the far-right have redefined that term
to mean "letting queer kids know that they're
allowed to be queer" and "respecting
children's choice of names" and "not outing
kids to their parents".

This scared the *shit* out of me. I was an
out queer/trans teacher and I realized that I
was one pissy parent away from getting
blasted on the libs of tiktok and labeled a
child molester just for existing. It's
already happened to out queer teachers. 

I had a day when *students* said some really
coded homophobic things about me to the
school I was working at---what it was doesn't
really matter---and then I had those repeated
back to me uncritically by my bosses and
while it was humiliating the more important
point is that it made me understand that none
of these people would have my back if shit
suddenly went south.

I realized if I get targeted that these
people wouldn't defend me they'd immediately
be like "oh, god, we're so sorry we didn't
know we were employing a literal monster" to
whatever parents or unrelated conservatives
who ranted at them.

I had to get out. I just did.

So I have a new job that actually pays a
living wage---and full time to boot--at the
community college system working directly for
one of the higher-up deans.

I'll talk more about that job next time.