Is it safe?

Yes, it is. A compromised was reached, and my job is safe. All this means is that I now have to double and triple my efforts to get out of that 10th Circle Of Hell, whether by means of another job, or by freelancing full-time. On the latter of those two, things are headed in the right direction. I just picked up another client to do some copyediting for a series of web articles that this person is goign to publish.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Stay tuned to this station....

....for further updates, as my employer is screwing with me big time. I may not have a job by tomorrow morning, depending on what happens during a meeting with my supervisor tonight. Without getting into too many details as of now, it deals with in part, a letter from my doctor that I gave them about 2 weeks ago that noted the need for me to take a few breaks during the course of my shift for certain medical necessities that I have, such as checking my blood sugar. There is also the little case of them accusing me of breaking a company rule, which I did not - and I think is retaliation for my going to a lawyer for advice, as the company owed me over 6 months worth of retroactive pay that they only got to me once I advised them that I had consulted a lawyer about my options.

This is not going to be pretty no matter what the outcome.

Dad.

On this the 200th post of this blog, I was going to publish something I had started on the nature of friendship. Instead, I am dedicating it to the memory of my father. Regular readers may remember that my dad died of AIDS, contracting it a during blood transfusion while undergoing cardiac bypass surgery in 1984. He was in that first group of people to get infected back then from transfusions, and four years later, on Valentine's Day in 1988 he would die of complications from HIV. The horror show that was his illness, which wasn't picked up until late into the course of it, impacted me (in addition to my family) in ways that still resonate to this day.

The anger that I carried with me festered for a great long time, and was only truly exorcised but a few years ago. Still, there are certain things that still make me shudder; His never living long enough to see me act, to succeed in my former profession, to become a writer, and I think most certainly where my brother is concerned, to see the birth of my niece, his first and only grandchild. At the same time, I'm glad that he wasn't there to see what I went through during my illness and subsequent transplant, but then again, he would have been there to support my mom.

As a result, Valentine's Day is a bittersweet one for me. Mrs. Nighttime and I always celebrate the day before, as the day itself can be too difficult on some years. It is also, for some reason, the only part of my Judaism that I stick to, lighting a yahrzheit lamp on the anniversary of his death as well as on Yom Kippur.

This year I will be on stage in the show that I'm currently in, imagining that he is in the audience. I would like to think he would have been proud of my accomplishments over the years. We never saw eye-to-eye on a lot of things, though towards the end, he was getting a better understanding of why I loved being a paramedic.

Cheers Dad.

No joy in Mudville...

I didn't get the public relations job. I don't know why as of yet, as I just found out late today. I'm going to call tomorrow to see if there is anything I could have done better, or at least why I wasn't chosen.

Unreal, and I was stunned. I have been through this so many times in the past few years, and it is really wearing on my soul. This was the best opportunity to come along in some time, and if I can't even get something like this, I don't know what I'm going to do...

On the plus side, it looks like I picked up a new client for my writing business, so maybe this is a sign to go full-bore into my freelance business, and damn the torpedoes.