Today is gonna be the day
By now you should've somehow
I had been working to get a newsletter out this week after many months away, but now with yet another hugely tragic school shooting, I know I need to address this first.
If you care at all about gun control, take a minute and write your representatives in both houses. Just a one-line message works.
Sen. Feinstein is going for at least something - today she called on the Senate to pass the Age 21 Act, which would raise the age requirement to buy semi-automatics and large capacity ammo feeders to 21. This sounds to me like an incredibly low goal. There’s absolutely no defending machines designed to rapidly fire bullets after all the carnage we’ve seen. Who could disagree that at the very least we shouldn’t sell rapid fire guns to teenagers? She introduced this bill THREE YEARS AGO and it’s had absolutely NO ACTION since.
And please please please vote accordingly. Go to rallies, make noise. The NRA is slowly weakening in congress, but still holds strong among a very vocal minority of voters.
After this latest shooting in Texas the first thing I heard is the usual call to arm teachers and put guards in schools. Their dream is apparently a shoot-em-up lifestyle of constant gunfire. Perhaps we could look at what was done elsewhere and implement it here?
But people who own assault rifles REALLY LIKE owning them, and people who own other guns have been told they will lose theirs if they ban assault rifles, and the ability to obliterate things is a part of their personal culture, so much so that they will literally sacrifice children so they can continue to do so.
Literally.
It’s so hard to take, especially once you’ve sent your kids off to school for the day like everyone else, always knowing that there are plenty of weapons in this neighborhood.
Ok, that’s it. Here’s the rest of the newsletter. Hope you and yours are healthy, happy and safe.
How’ve You Been
Walking the dog, cool morning, got a blister on my heel so flip flops today
Just got back from a vacay, feeling fresh and glad and wishing you were with me
Listening to the crashing waves of the cars on the wide way, pause at the stop sign like the top of a coaster drop then wheee on to another day
How will it be today? How will it be today?
The dog always finds rotting food in the street, you'd never know it was there, so many chicken bones dropped by dumpster diving raccoons, it's only a guess
I see a peculiar tree and think of a house I knew briefly, it could have been mine but it wasn't meant to be
Focusing on now but what does it mean, now is so many, all the many, endless many things
Happiness is a tidy countertop, a digitally signed application, an achievement unlocked in my freebie phone game
I mean how many taps did that take
My dog's favorite thing in the entire world is to chew on a worm
He squirms on his back, prize clenched in his teeth, and I feel way too many emotions about it
Looking for lessons that really aren't there
I mean, really aren't there
Because joy is a novel published and joy is a nap
Joy is a passed-hors d’oeuvres-cocktail-and-costume-jewelry reunion and joy is absolute silent solitude
Joy is a week of creation and joy is a day of rest
Joy is a day of creation and joy is a week of rest
Doing what makes you happy is an extremely complicated proposition
Anyone who says “just” hasn't thought hard enough
So how have I been, I wonder, how have I been
I've been pretty good
—js 5/16/22
The Front Lines
I finished up my training in downtown Santa Ana for my first paid job in over 12 years.
Before you go full celebration on me, it's extremely short term.
I’m going to work customer service at a vote center in the California primary. Our state has a robust early vote program, and OC is at the forefront in providing full services in the run-up to election day.
I thought it was weird that I hadn’t done it before, but the commitment doesn’t jive with anyone who has a job or has to care for young children. You have to be available for 7 days back-to-back. You’ll work 4 days, you just don’t know which until you are scheduled. (I’m taking the shorter-term job. The longer one is a two-week commitment that I just couldn’t manage). Before then you have a full work day’s worth of online training, an hour of online harassment training, and a full day of in-person training, including pay.
The system is incredibly intricate and the training has to match it. Imagine learning a customer service job at a location that requires actions on the part of the customer. It could easily take a month of on-the-job experience to learn all the ins and outs of the computer system, the facility, the physical equipment, the management protocols, etc. Anyone working a vote center has to have instant expertise in a tightly legislated and fundamentally important service that citizens take very seriously….and most of us are either entry-level college students who’ve never had a job before or retirees who haven’t had a job in a while.
Even so, the in-person training was extremely heartening, as everyone there worked their hardest to get the endless amount of information down.
I signed up for a few reasons:
Get paid for something for once
Add it to my resume
Assist directly in democracy
Help protect the vote specifically
See for myself if the system is any good
So far, I’m very impressed with the way everything works. There is a huge amount of checking and double-checking to make sure no one can tamper with the system. My favorite part so far is that the votes are placed in a sealed, tagged, noted, chain-of-custody delivery bag at the end of each night and two CSRs drive it to the Registrar’s office. The bag is in one driver’s trunk, and the other driver follows. No stops at a Wendy’s drive-thru allowed.
I absolutely love this form of public service and wish it were more accessible to all. After my crunch day I am not worried about it as much. Diligent grandmas and eager students aren’t a bad lot for the task. We’ll be ready to go when the doors open in the first week of June.
The most important thing I learned in my training is that I am there to protect the voting rights of everyone who walks in. If you have a tricky voting situation, no matter what it is, you can ALWAYS vote provisionally. No one has to leave the center without exercising their right to vote. #publicservice
(But seriously, if you are able, just mail in the ballot, it saves everyone a lot of time and energy.)
Jen, you’ve been MIA for months. This gig doesn’t explain that. What the hell else is up?
I’m glad you asked, Italics.
I am always oscillating in my focus, but there was a good chunk of my last few months spent looking for a job. It was…humbling.
I figured I had a shot at writing something, perhaps in blogging for a non-profit, creating think-pieces for a place like Medium, etc. I think of myself as fairly tech-savvy, so looking online shouldn’t be an issue, right?
I had completely forgotten that the last time I landed a brand new job, I found it in the newspaper. Yes, the physical newspaper, which I received every day, as part of my being an adult human in the year 2002.
Still, I figured it wouldn’t be anything I couldn’t handle. Job searching is basically a hunt for the right information, a study session, then a written and oral test. I’ve always tested well. I dove into the usual employment sites.
I was instantly adrift. The positions, the terminology, the experience needed…it was all new to me. It took days for me to decipher half of the lingo and acronyms. The world really did change in the last 20 years
It was especially cutting for me because I wanted a writing job, but I definitely did not want a social media job. I’m protective of my free time and the space I make for it. I could probably be good at it but I know me, I would work way too hard on it, and my personal life would suffer.
So I aimed for “write on your own time” work, which is usually freelancing. Freelancing doesn’t seem to be about writing so much as it’s about selling yourself as a freelancer. It’s mercenary work. I like writing, but dreaming up random things to write about, in an effort to write anything for anyone, would be a tough go for me. Writing to audiences of very specific stripes in areas I didn’t necessarily love doesn’t excite me.
Besides, most of the jobs were for writing shitty “mindful self-care wellness” blogs, preying on those who are feeling shitty because they are working themselves to death, selling the at-risk among us woo-woo nonsense like so many smaller fish tailing along after the sharks of industry, hoping to catch scraps of human remains and saying they’re just trying to stay afloat, it’s not their fault the system is so terrible, but all the while enabling the monsters to continue their onslaught on personal space and free time, because now the onus is on regular people to fight for their own two minutes of peace, and of course buy some bullshit in the process…
Anyway. I am letting go of the idea of a steady check for now. Instead, I’m volunteering for a non-profit called StandUp for Kids. Check them out, they are an amazing organization. I’m helping them plan a fundraiser event. Hopefully I’ll write more about that in the future.
That will have to be it for now. See you soon. I hope.
Congratulations on the new jobs. I'm going to eventually have to job hunt and I'm not at all looking forward to it. The world has changed quite a bit lately.