I am afraid of the usual round of things. Like many sailors, I fear going overboard in the North Atlantic. An informant who was a lobsterman told me about how he was washed overboard; he watched his boat circle just far enough away that he could not reach her. Lucky for him, another lobsterman picked him up before he died from hypothermia. I’d panic in a similar circumstance.
But there is one other thing I fear much more. Being back working for the Federal government.
Not long after several dream jobs as a practicing anthropologist, I took a position that would offer the fiscal and staff resources to achieve some of the things I had dreamed of. Except it wasn’t. Somebody else in the organization desperately wanted the position and was willing to scorch the earth to obstruct progress. The slightest financial disbursements and programming decisions required exquisite reconciliation with other “cooperating” agencies or staff. I had to claw through mounds of obstruction to achieve minimal results.
Despite all the issues, we managed to achieve much. But, the program ended as part of the “Reinvention of government.”
The day I shut the door on the program, I went home with my constant companions of several years – the tick in my left eye, the clenched grinding teeth, and the sores in my mouth.
The next day, I drove to the coast and went to work in a boatyard for the first time in about twenty years. I was happy.
What do I fear? What are my nightmares? I have a nightmare of waking up and going to work in my old federal government job – the one thing that can get me up in a cold sweat at night. You just could not pay enough to make me do it.
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I hate a-holes like that! It seems the current House of Representatives is full of such obstructionists, who at $174,000 a year plus extravagant staff funds should be ashamed to call themselves servants of the people. How people vote these a-holes into office is beyond me and I think we need a relook at civics classes for the next generations. Clearly, the people who vote obstructionists into office are unaware of the whole concept of representative rupublicanism! There! That’s my rant for the day.
Civics classes would be a great start…require every member of Congress to take a high school civics course – you don’t pass – you don’t get to serve.
Yep!
It’s amazing to me how people can be. I feel the same way about going back to teaching. Teaching was great. The departmental politics and competition wasn’t and it made no sense to me. It’s that scarcity thing, I guess, and jealousy. All I wanted was to teach my classes and get a paycheck so I could keep teaching my classes.
Your last sentence expresses my feelings also. I just wanted to create good and significant programs, and get paid. The joy was in the public reactions to the programs, or in how school kids responded to working with traditional musicians or craftspeople.