The Omega Glory meets Willy Wonka: aka A Lost Plot with Half a Map

Watching my twin grandsons, aged 3, play and frolic is a delight. Suffused with so much energy and joy, they remain blissfully sheltered a world where a nigh-invisible organism is stalking and culling the human race. We work hard to shelter them as much as we can in Trump’s United States of Fascism. I envision my grandchildren as fully actualized human beings – not just cogs in some dystopian corporate machine.

The Black Plague birthed the Renaissance – what will be born out of our current Plague? In the United States and worldwide, the inflection point is now and our ultimate disposition depends on whether the oligarchs wield enough power to keep the rest of us under their yoke, or not.

How do you wake up the tired/overworked/overmedicated/somnambulating masses in this country? How do you spur them to collectivize and fight? How to teach them that together they are strong? I DO NOT blame the people for their situation… the Powers That Be work tirelessly to undermine collective action, and have since the 1960s by “any means necessary.” Good old-fashioned fear knits together racism, sexism, tribalism into a tool that divides us and keeps us punching down, rather than punching up, and finding out what is really going on. Xenophobia, fear of job loss, fear that we can’t afford the plastic pretties that measure our worth, fear of missing out, fear of pain, fear of change, all feed into a desperate populace, trying to just maintain mental health. Adding in lack of healthcare, addiction issues (a side effect of living in a toxic stew), drugging the masses (with actual drugs, with things, with unreasonable expectations, etc.) just makes this country more toxic.

The Republicans manipulate these fears masterfully, to be honest. The COVID-19 pandemic naturally ratchets fear up to 11, and the GOP is grabbing power behind the curtain (ie. Suspending environmental regulations, attempting to suspend constitutional rights, ad nauseum…). The question remains… how long can they continue with the body count climbing exponentially every day. When/if the populace wakes up (ie. when the drugs stop working), will we 1) end up like Syria… a wartorn wasteland with factions fighting over rubble, 2) end up like The Handmaid’s Tale, 3) begin to rebuild the United States into a truly more perfect union, or 4) end up as several smaller countries based on regional affinities, which may already be underway.

I wish the answers were clearer, but the road ahead is dark.  The 1918 Influenza pandemic guides us for part of what we are experiencing, but very little precedent exists for the concurrent constitutional crisis. Never have we seen one political party almost completely abdicate constitutional duty in pursuit of power.

The Constitution only has as much value as we collectively give it, through real faith in the tenets of which it is comprised. I am reminded of the original Star Trek Omega Glory episode in which the constitution has become “sacred words” but whose real meaning has been lost. When the Constitution becomes words on paper that nobody understands and to which only lipservice is paid, the precarious historical precipice on which we stand is clear. When an amendable, living document of governance is treated as sacred, inviolable, and unchangeable, the plot is lost.

So, for now, we muddle through as best we can with a vile, despotic, dementia-riddled madman as the titular figurehead of this country. The States have effectively become sovereign unto themselves – haggling on the open market for supplies and equipment to aid our frontline medical personnel in saving as many lives as they can. Unless the madman decides we are all equal and deserving, we are headed for battlefield triage conditions without help and control measures.

And yet a third of the country supports him and the more his daily lies are televised, more people seem to think he is worthy of praise… but will his political aspirations for a second term survive the coming body count?

And these came up in my mix in Spotify today, randomly... 

https://youtu.be/4mam3iJLvCs

https://youtu.be/YSZf0yIx1ec

Emotional Labor, Toxic Masculinity, Trump

I feel compelled to write about emotional labor this week. On Wednesday I read several news stories that really impressed on me how unequal the distribution of emotional labor is between men & women, black & white, rich & poor and the depth to which it is embedded in our social power structure.

I’d like to start with a quick definition, but that is much harder than it sounds. Emotional labor is a relatively new term in scheme of things, but it deals a lot with things like fake friendliness service industry workers have to put on, and the way we (especially women) are expected to BE when interacting with the world.

A good primer appeared in this blog post by Leah Fessler: “While the term emotional labor was originally coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, her description of the need for workers to regulate their emotions (so to satisfy their customers) feels a bit academic. Personally, I’m more disposed toward Hy’s definition of emotional labor as “shit someone does that goes unrecognized,” but again, that’s pretty general.”

She also references Adam Grant’s Worklife podcast about faking emotions . Emotional labor is likened to receiving a crappy gift from Aunt Bernadette and having to pretend you like it, but the concept is extrapolated out to having to be nice at work to everyone to assure everyone else’s comfort and ease, and the exhaustion that follows on that from having to wear a mask.

Now that the definition is out of the way, we can really get started. Emotional Labor has been widely adopted in feminist circles since women bear the unequal yoke, if not the whole yoke, of emotional labor. We bear the expectation of making others feel comfortable, of not burdening others with our troubles, and so on… women are often the ones who send the birthday cards, arrange the kids’ birthday parties, etc. while the men just show up. Emotional labor exhibits many nuances and definitions. However, I think the division of emotional labor illustrates a lot about the power structure in our society and also serves as a springboard to beginning to really understand and solve the problem.

A couple of articles and general trends of discourse in our country really sparked my thoughts on this topic this week and led me to extrapolate the emotional labor concept beyond just men and women…

1) From Raw Story: “Judge scolds four men who raped drunk teenage girls in Myrtle Beach instead of giving them jail time” My outrage meter maxed out, beginning with this story. We have seen this same story repeatedly, the young men are allowed to walk free with very little, if any punishment, and with every concern for their futures. In the meantime, the victims are blamed & shamed, and left with the entire emotional toll of being sexually assaulted. The emotional labor borne by these women includes the aforementioned shame & blame, then compounded by the fact that they did everything right (by reporting what happened & undergoing the experience of rape kit creation, which may or not be tested in all-too-many cases) and then have to watch their attackers walk off mostly unscathed and care free.

The young men receive the clear message that their actions aren’t so bad and they needn’t worry their little heads about it. The pervasive message of “boys will be boys” infuses our culture, absolving them of blame & responsibility. Emotional wreckage is left to the women they assaulted. In this case there is NO YOKE, as opposed just an unequal one. They probably experienced remorse for being caught, but the judge told them that they were just bad little boys and sent them on their way.

The womens’ burden isn’t considered because women aren’t considered whole human beings. Only straight white men are whole human beings.

2) From the Bradenton Herald: “Parents complain about ‘militant’ dress code at Lakewood Ranch middle school” In this story, a 12-year-old middle school girl chose to wear a sports bra to school, and this school has a “no visible bras” policy. The assistant principal actually had to move the girl’s hair to even see the bit of bra “peeking out”. She was then pulled from class and taken to a “holding room” until her mother could come and bring her “more appropriate clothing.” And, per the story, this young woman wasn’t the only girl pulled from class, as there were other girls changing clothes and mothers leaving with the “offensive” clothing.

A quote from the article states, “Young women are disproportionately cited for dress code violations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which contacted the school district after Martinez’s story went viral. While she was accused of being a distraction to students, the organization said Martinez’s peers should learn to control their gaze.”

So again, we have emotional labor falling on women. Time and again, young girls and women are being burdened with boys & men being unable to control their feelings. So instead of teaching males to police themselves and control themselves, that labor is being put on females to do the policing… of what they wear, what they say, how they act, etc… to prevent inciting male emotions. Then you add in the fact that it’s usually the mothers having to bring the change of clothing for their daughters, often having to take time off of work, simply adding to the burden.

Males are again allowed to walk free with no emotional consequences or responsibilities because the women are carrying that load, as expected… another “no yoke” situation in which boys will be boys.

3) From the NY Post: “Nurse killed herself after being bullied at work, probe finds” This article served as my extrapolation springboard from emotional labor as just a feminist issue. I am a Registered Nurse, and have been MOSTLY lucky enough to work in places where the bullying hasn’t been that bad. A friend shared this article on Facebook, so I read it very quickly after the previous two. It really got me thinking how bullying is really someone with an inability to handle their own emotional labors trying to pass that work onto others. How that inability is acquired doesn’t matter.

However, I think the key is that these people have a deficit and addressing it is key. These are people who don’t feel a responsibility to their own emotional health or that of others. They believe and act (for whatever reason) like their emotional work and burdens are for others to bear. The thought of them ever being to blame for their actions is really beyond their base capacities, so they blame everyone else.

These stories are illustrative of trends that we are seeing in over media overall. These examples are mostly feminist, obviously, but I think of examples from my own life and our national discourse, and it seems to me there are some solutions embedded in the questions themselves.

Most personally, apart from the bullying that I suffered all from grade school through high school, the worst bullying and gaslighting lasted for 3.5 months. I took a job halfway across the country with great expectations, only to find myself in the most toxic work situation I have ever experienced. The place was the very definition of gaslighting, with moving goalposts, and blame for everything bad placed on my shoulders. I don’t know what the issues were there, but the emotional burden others had was happily dumped on the new person (me) by those who apparently couldn’t deal with their own issues.

My daughter recently divorced an emotionally abusive man. They lived with us for several years and the level of gaslighting he tried to use on us was apparently a small fraction of what he put her through. I never felt he particularly emotionally well-developed. He was always very good at coming up with blame and excuses when confronted. He would make great pronunciations about how he was going to change, over and over, but he never did. I knew she was carrying a lot of burden in that relationship, but only after it was over did I begin to appreciate all that he put her through. She carried the emotional water for a good number of years until she decided she’d had enough. She is now healing and moving forward with her life.

In our national political discourse, we have a man-baby in the White House who reminds me greatly of my former son-in-law, who was never taught or expected to do his own emotional labor. That is for the peons and little people to do, so he can stand there, living out his vision of being a “big man’. However, the blame for all of his failures falls on the string of ex-wives, mistresses, affairs, brown people, those who disagree with him, etc. And he is happy to tell us all about it in his tweets, ad nauseum. As I like to say, he has the self-reflection of a brick.



He really is the epitome of toxic masculinity and racism and misogyny, etc. Problem is, what he does and says is not being met with resistance from those who count, and those who idolize him take his words & deeds as tacit approval. Now brought to the fore, we see white straight males fighting back against being asked to do their own emotional work. They were so long relieved of that burden by social norms… giving it to women, blacks, other minorities who were all expected to serve without question. In that imaginary-world-that-never-existed, white men were unburdened, able to follow their noble pursuits without burden of care. This is where they want us to return, as the proper place for the “not-them” is wherever they say it is and the “not-them” is bound to act as they dictate.

Apparently, emotional labor is for the weak and those who have no choice.

The answer to the problem is fairly simple, start taking emotional health & labor seriously, start teaching others how to be emotionally healthy and to take responsibility for themselves. But first, we need a society that takes emotional well-being seriously for everyone and the basic recognition that emotional labor is a thing. Unfortunately while the cartoonish vision of men ala Toxic Masculinity remain the norm, we can't even begin to change.

It's not about the children, it's about you.

A conversation from when I was a teenager, probably about age 16, with my friend and her father has stuck with me a long time. The argument that was made against mixed race couples having children struck me as wrong then, and has bubbled up in my thoughts occasionally over the many intervening years. I finally figured out why.

The argument was that mixed race couples shouldn't have kids because we should think of "how the children would be treated."

It dawned on me this morning just how wrong that argument was, and in so many ways. Maybe the memory bubbled up due to the sociopolitical upheaval we find ourselves in currently; namely the horrendous resurgence of hegemony of white, cis-gendered, straight maleness.

By stating that people shouldn't have the freedom to marry those they love and shouldn't have children because of how they will treated infuriates me, for many reasons:
1) It puts the responsibility for any abuse on the victim
2) It basically states the status quo is always right
3) It absolves the one holding that position from needing to change

That (now former) friend recently accused me of being hateful because I was not willing to just roll over and let her walk all over me. I wasn't all-accepting of her intolerance, and really hadn't even responded to her much. When I'd gone to respond, she had apparently blocked me. Then she inblocked me and lobbed a hate bomb at me... I blocked her in response at that point; there was no real reason to respond or argue with her.

I have unfriended a lot of people in the last year. If they have been silent/equivocal, I have quietly unfriended them. If they have exhibited support for the other side, I have not tolerated it. I don't care. I cannot and will not have that energy in my life.

Trumpmerica Day 5: The Bill of Goods with a “special secret” menu

I think the time for recriminations, finger-pointing, division and blame re. “why Hillary lost” needs to stop at least yesterday. With enough blame to go around, we don’t need a circular firing squad; we need to quickly learn from what happened and begin the hard work of reimagining and rebuilding our broken country. Trump’s election stands as both a symptom and product of the deeper ills plaguing the United States.

Trump is a master showman & fraudster – solidly evidenced by his businesses, successful or not – specifically, regarding the KIND of businesses he gravitates toward. He builds big shiny skyscrapers, casinos and hawks steaks, wine, his “university”, clothing line, et cetera… All flashy, status-ey things with his name slapped on them; all of touted to be biggest, the best, and the glitziest; truthfully, the core is hollow and the glitter is just spray paint. We accepted the scam & sham as part of his persona until the 2016 election; he was a kind of national joke, “that’s just Donald Trump.” When he descended the golden, of course, escalator at Trump Tower to his (paid) adoring crowd, he remained a joke, and was treated by the media as a reality TV star, not a real presidential candidate. Then the spray paint & reality got conflated, and here we are, unsure of objective reality vs. spray paint fumes. The run for the presidency legitimized the scam, and people bought it lock, stock & barrel. Welcome to Trumpmerica, the dystopian theme park we can’t leave.

The Bill of Goods chosen for all of us by about 25% (not even the majority vote) of the entire electorate is full of a lot of big, and likely empty, promises. Let’s look at a few of the biggies:

1. Trump promises to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Interestingly, the cast being chosen to play the principals in the tragicomedy are long-time residents of the swamp… hanging around in varying levels of marginalization, especially in recent years. Now they slither right up to lick their new master’s boots to ensure their parts of the swamp aren’t drained.

2. Trump promises to repeal & replace Obamacare with “something terrific”. Well, if he means terrific in the archaic sense, “causing terror,” he is probably closer than if is trying to use the modern meaning. While Obamacare isn’t perfect, it’s better than what we didn’t have before, but we know that it will be repealed in short order come 20 January. Replacement details are vague, including elements about Health Savings Accounts and buying insurance across state lines. Beyond that, no plans for transition or implementation are out there. The Republicans have bitched about Obamacare for over 6 years, but have never given us any more than vague generalities – exactly zip, zilch & nada. Sadly those who bought into the scam are most likely to be the hardest hit or simply continue as they were, particularly if they live in a state that didn’t take part in the Medicare expansion.

3. Trump promises to have Mexico pay for the wall he wants to build, and deport all 11 million illegal immigrants. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said clearly in July that Mexico will not pay for Trump’s estimated $7.8 trillion boondoggle. So, if Mexico won’t pay for it, who will? Will Congressional Republicans agree to it, considering how they prefer to take money from programs for the needy and redistribute it to their corporate masters? They might go along with it if their buddies can have a piece of the pie. It might be a great jobs program, along with hiring all the new deportation/corrections officers for the 11 million they plan on removing or incarcerating, starting 20 January.

4. Trump promises to bring jobs back to the country. As mentioned above, his wall and deportation program may well be the cornerstone of his plan. Sadly though, his big plans are covered in that same flaky gold spray paint. The manufacturing jobs lost across the Midwest and South since the 1970s have devastated those regions. These very people are those who have hitched their wagon to Trump’s star power. These people have been largely taken for granted by the Democratic Party as a demographic, with no real help offered to help them pivot from the economy of the 1950s to the realities of today. In the meantime, the Republican Party simply disposed of them as just the “cost of doing business.” However, Trump’s slithery cast of characters marching in time with the Corporate Congress isn’t likely to help them. More corporate tax breaks, laissez-faire governance, lax labor laws, will only lead to lower wages, more offshoring of jobs and higher unemployment.

5. Trump promises registration and surveillance of Muslims. Blatantly unconstitutional (for now), this will be fought in the courts as long and hard as people are able. Again there is the question of cost, and perhaps it’s another part of the shiny new jobs plan.

These are some of Trump’s biggest and baddest promises in the Bill of Goods. One need only look at the Corporate Republican Congress and the swamp dwellers slithering onstage to see what is happening. The corporate elites will enjoy even greater license to influence the halls of power. More of our tax dollars will flow into their pockets, while worthy social service programs will continue to face cuts under the guise of the welfare mother and all the tired old tropes that paint the poor as lazy, unworthy, et cetera. (Read as people of color.) Additionally more of the taxes that are to support the military will flow into the coffers of defense contractors, not service members.

None of this has even touched on the inherent racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim rhetoric in his campaign. To a one, Trump and his surrogates have united in their message disavowing any of the above. He asserted that African Americans and Hispanic American communities are “living in hell” and vowed to help them (again shiny spray painted words) while saying that known African American communities like Chicago, St. Louis and Philadelphia should be watched for signs of fraud on election day. This isn’t even a dog whistle unless you are denser than dog snot, it’s a fucking flashing red neon sign that says, “Racism Here.” Couple that with his big plans for Muslims… oh boy.

The other flashing red neon sign says “Misogyny Here.” While Trumps claims to be more respectful of women than probably anyone ever, his boasts about being able to grab women by the pussy anytime he wants paints a different picture. When that revelation is followed by 12 women coming forward, his only form of denial is to call them all liars and threaten to sue them.

The racism, misogyny, and hatred of anyone not a white straight male is sort of like the secret menu that everyone knows about on the Bill of Goods. If you voted for Trump out of pure intention, you purchased the whole bill of goods, including the secret menu stuff. Your vote shows that you accept it. You knew it was there, you cannot say you didn’t see it. It was part and parcel of his campaign from day one. You did this, you cannot blame anyone else. You made this choice for the whole country and you have been had. All of us will have to live with the aftermath of your actions, some already are, especially the “others”, minorities, women, LGBTQ folks, non-Christians, et cetera. Thank for caring more about yourself than the country as a whole. Most of us didn’t choose the ticket to Trumpmerica.

Marshmallow fluff vs. raw broccoli

This election season has been long, hard, and difficult to watch. The cockroaches of racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, etc.(!) have all felt comfortable enough to come out into the light. Mind you, the seeds of this emergence have been planted and carefully nurtured for the last 50 years by one political party in particular. The democrats, however, got complacent and lazy, and did nothing but to weakly yell “s-t-o-p” like a traffic cop on Quaaludes; allowed themselves/choosing to be drug further and further away from their core values in search of votes, especially after Reagan, attempting to regain the votes of the Reagan Democrats.

Additionally, it must be acknowledged that our educational system has been steadily gutted by Republican policies. The emphasis has been on education that will help our youth become cogs in a greater machine, but not necessarily become well-rounded citizens capable of critical thinking. Civics education, in which I got a good grounding, as recently as the 1980s, seems to be all but gone in our schools; my own children seemed woefully uneducated about it in the early 2000s. The “person-on-the-street” interviews in which people are unable to answer very basic questions about our democratic system are funny, but also frightening, especially when you realize these people are going to vote. It’s true that some people just really don’t care, but A LOT of people DO care, but haven’t been given the knowledge or tools that encourage critical thinking. They are more interested in the Dancing With the Stars, Snookie, or the Real Housewives of Schmuck City. Government and civics aren’t shiny or fun, but that knowledge is fundamental to a healthy republic. Education funding has been gutted, standards denigrated, and vouchers & testing raised up as the answers to all the problems, but our schools continue to worsen. Also, teachers bear all the blame (and get no respect) for all that is wrong with the education system; they continue to be loaded down with more and more regulation with little or no increases in pay, and are regarded in many quarters as lazy drains on the system. This has led to a wholesale hollowing out of our education system.

So, after years of dog-whistle politics by the Republicans, and the Democrats refusing to really fight strongly for their core beliefs, we arrive at where we are today. Combined with a deliberate dumbing down of society, this is a recipe for disaster. People look at their twitter & facebook feeds, shut out the things they don’t want to hear and allow themselves to be spoonfed lies, or absorb them through osmosis. It almost seems that the more outrageous the lie, the more they want to belive it, rather than taking the effort to go out and research the truth… and then even if they find the truth, if it doesn’t fit their views, they will ignore it anyway. I’d like to say that one side does it more than the other, but I mostly have created my own echo chamber too.

The election this year has boiled down to two choices. Most people don’t like the choices that feel forced on us. The Republicans are doing their best to maintain a semblance of unity, but it’s apparent that the chewing gum and baling wire is about ready to give at any time. The Democratic side hasn’t been without its issues. Bernie Sanders enthused a lot of people who wanted real change, who felt like he understood their concerns. But Hillary Clinton won out on the Dem side, and not without a lot of funky finagling that raised some very valid questions. However, like it or not, Hillary became the Democratic nominee, and Bernie Sanders has rallied to the cause and even managed to drag her quite a ways back towards the traditional issues of the left.

Interestingly, Donald Trump tapped a similar type of voter to those who rallied to Sanders, mainly those who have felt left behind by the real but sometimes painfully slow economic recovery since the crash of 2008. So the appeal of both Trump & Sanders is understandable, however their approach is sort of like comparing mini pineapples to hand grenades. Whereas Sanders took a message of equality, increased minimum wage, peace, education, equal pay, and came up with relatively realistic ways to achieve his agenda with a message of building to a better brighter future; Trump has painted a picture of a dark now and darker future, always dragging us back to a past that we need to get back to achieve greatness again, and he has dwelt on blaming the “other”, which in his mind anyone who opposes him or who is not white & male.

Trump is marshmallow fluff, it's fun to eat now but makes you sick later. He’s also a false fronted old building with a beautiful chair gold chair behind a fancy wooden desk inside (in reality, the chair is spray-painted gold and upholstered with cheap polyester velvet & the plywood desk is covered with wood patterned contact paper). He spouts and repeats lies ad nauseum about how he is the only one who can fix things.

Clinton is raw broccoli without cheese sauce or salt, the thing you know you should be eating. She is a stodgy cinder-block building with a beat up wooden straight-backed chair behind an equally beat up wooden desk. Her message encourages people working together to effect change, but she promises no quick fixes.

Sometimes you have to eat the broccoli and take the long term and thousand mile view because it’s the best thing to do.

two and a half years of post morteming...

It's been an interesting week. I have finally put the bulk of the King Co. experience behind me. I think spending the weekend with Susan, who was there with me and pretty much is the only person who knows and understands completely how bad it really was. That much validation helps alleviate the insidious effects of the personally targeted gaslighting that they practiced with almost surgical precision. I have long had a habit of post mortem-ing events that go wrong to try and have a good understanding of what went wrong, and what I can learn about it. I have spent far too much time over the last 2.5 years in post-mortem mode... and the only thing is that it really was personal, it is the only thing that even makes sense.  Especially considering that I went into that opportunity with a solid 7 year run and an Army Commendation Medal for my year in Texas. For the first time in my life, I don't think I made any glaring mistakes apart from simply being myself. And if there is one thing that I have learned about myself, trying to change to fit in with others doesn't work... I did try to conform... and it didn't work, yet again... Funny that. "It wasn't me, it was them." So this week has had several unasked for affirmations of my value to people who DO count in my life. It also made it easier for me to cut loose some ties that I was maintaining out of (what I thought was) mutual respect and affection... which were apparently not the case, as I found out via a backdoor source. It's sad but I do not deserve to have so-called friends 2K miles away gossiping away behind my back. So the unfriending shears came out. They don't have anything to gossip about, if they even notice. I could be hurt, but there really isn't a reason, just let it go. We had known diffs, but again, "it isn't me, it's them." As I get older, I am getting feisty... and my deep seated anger is coming out. It's not uncontrolled, but is being carefully channeled... and I am using it to establish myself in the world. I have spent most of my life sitting down and shutting up. Honestly I am sick of it. I am pretty much single handedly supporting my family plus some other folks, I joined the Army as an officer and had  great run with that as well. It also got me to where I am now, as did the King Co disaster. I am glad to be where I am now, and I think the rough journey has made success now even sweeter.

When rose-colored glasses lose their bloom

I'm in a strange limbo right now.  I have amazing news I want to share with the world, but can't until everything is officially official... and after the false start with the VA offer last year, I'm a little gun shy.  

So I'm sitting with a job offer contingent  upon passing the background checks and urine test. I know I have nothing to worry about, as far as I know.... but there is always the niggling worry that I missed something.  But all the information I gave was given in good faith and as completely as I could do.  But "VA debacle" echoes in my mind... with the caveat that the VA digs a helluva lot deeper than most usual jobs who call and verify dates of employment... or just rejected me due to a box mis-checked somewhere. I chose to not find out, it was just too much last year.

Overall I've been really happy at CUP, but when things went south,  they did so with a vengeance... I've been accused (directly & indirectly) of procrastination, bad time management, too much chatting... basically being blamed for all that is wrong in this work situation...  I'm not blameless, because no one ever is... but management has set this system up for failure.

Let's set the stage a bit: a small (mostly)  managed Medicaid company trying to really become a player in a bigger market and is expanding lines of business rapidly including trying to become an early adopter for behavioral health integration... which will have to be done now or later. However, the push for this has led to the neglect of existing programs and personnel, most of which are state-audited. The program that I work, Health Homes, was pretty much seen as "flavor of the month"  for most of the first year, but has since become the premier model for care management as far as the state is concerned.

The next piece is that the State of Washington has no single documentation system for the program, thus leaving it up to each Health Homes lead agency to come up with their own system as long as they can meet requirements. Enter in my company: we were under one company in 2013-14 and then switched to another in 2015. They knew this was happening and assured us that the switch in  systems should be smooth and no data would be lost. Can you say "famous last words"? Sure, knew you could...  Anyway, the rollout went worse than anyone could have imagined... We just got full access to everything we need a few weeks ago... Member services just got their access for making appointments in May... We didn't get all existing member lists completely loaded until early April... We still haven't gotten old charting imported... Mind you, my compatriot was asking questions in every meeting about many of the problems that have come to pass...

Add in the fact that we have lost 2 people working the program, one of whom was full time and the other who is sure that her preterm labor was from the stress.  Also, include that my job entails all the  utilization review, several call attempts monthly, hospital visits, follow up calls for transition, calls to doctors for members, concurrent review when hospitalized, intake of new members, crisis  &  general calls, and quarterly face to face visits... For nearly 70 members. I'm finding out that at most health insurance companies, these jobs are split out over a team...

So, this is what we have been scrambling to deal with since the beginning of the year.  We have had periodic moments of "get this done now" and "Help this other group! They are swamped!" while being told not to worry about health homes... Until the last few weeks with the state audit coming up.

So now they are freaking out and denying time off, stating that it's due to people not being caught up... funny that the audit is coming up and management had the reporting requirements in hand on 25 May. But we paeans didn't get the  directions & our directives until June 11th (Thursday) to be completed by June 15th (Monday). By placing the blame on non-management, they are trying to deny their own culpability.

I just see a lot of planning for the next big expansion and not a lot of routine maintenance type activities. There has pretty much been little or no support from management for the program I have been working. My fellow coworkers are amazing.... they are what makes working there worthwhile... and I love my clients and the work that I'm doing.  I feel like I'm making a difference.

But, things have started going south, as previously mentioned, but I am determined to not go down the same road as I did with King Co. This hasn't even gotten close to that bad, but I have been paying close attention to my gut and the situation was irretrievably broken when our amazing admin let my compatriot and I know that she'd been told to only communicate with us via e-mail since her coming over to talk to us would "distract us" from our work.  That level of BS was intolerable, considering I'd spent the greater part of the previous 2 months working through lunches and spending several hours, sometimes up to half the day, usually three days weekly, out of the office on member visits for follow up or new patient assessments. It just pissed me off.  It's hard to get all your work done when you aren't in the office to get it done.  

So, I had my interview for the new gig on Tuesday, I went out feeling like there was a good rapport, but it was short... and I kept thinking about what I should have said, asked, etc. It was a first round interview, I was just hoping it went well enough to get to the 2nd round.  It was interesting, though, since they were all taking careful notes about exactly when I was going to be in Kentucky and when I might want to start. I thought it was a little unusual for a first round interview, but let it be what it was. The next morning, just 25 hours 45 minutes after I left the interview, I got a call and was offered the job at a substantial pay increase. I accepted it straight away and admitted I was a little stunned and she said that they usually don't move so quickly, but they also super impressed with me and didn't want me to get away.  My start date is the Monday, 20 July after I get back from Kentucky. 

Giving notice will be interesting. I don't want to give notice until I have the officially official word, which should be Tuesday or Wednesday this week.  It will be a fitting revenge for my massively passive aggressive supervisor, who has been described by another coworker with Katy Perry's help.

I have also kept myself from Unravelling ala Deb Talan:

The other song in my head is:

 

Another good one is: