Movements Feel Good

What a shitty summer this has been: June brought unemployment; August, Aunt Kittie's death; October, Mom's death. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm reeling.

It seems to me that I get unemployed just when everything else hits the fan. Back in '98 I lost my job, the house, broke up with then-boyfriend Matt and moved into the attic at Johnson Avenue, sharing the house with the moms. It took me nine months to find a job back then, but it led me to the Hollywood Reporter and the best career move I've ever made. Then the Nielsen Company bought up the conglomerate that owned the Reporter and things started going downhill fast. I survived four rounds of layoffs in two years, but got caught up in the fifth. And when I took a look at the job market, design jobs in publishing had vanished (I've seen three in L.A. in the last four months).

But now movement. And it comes just as the first rains of the fall/winter season have arrived. I've been working with EDD to land a WIA grant for retraining in Web design, since those are the only "publication" design jobs out there. And this week I began the research to make formal application for the money.

As an applicant, you're required to research and visit three schools that are approved by the program to provide instruction. Today I went to New Horizon in Burbank, which has a really great program that's only about six months long. Tomorrow (Wednesday) I'm going out to L.A. Valley College to check out their program, which runs a year and a half (though I think I could probably test out of a good nine months of that). Thursday, I'm off to an all-day seminar on resumes and interviewing techniques provided by Foothill Training Center, the one-stop shop in the San Gabriel Valley (where Pasadena is) for EDD. Then Friday I'm visiting ICDC College in Hollywood (can anyone say "Hollywood Upstairs Medical College"?) to check out their program.

From what I know, I'm leaning toward the New Horizon program; not only is it the shortest one, but it also provides testing to become an Adobe Certified Expert, which is kind of like an MD in the Web world (Adobe writes all the programs used in most kinds of graphic design).

So, hopefully by the end of next week I will have the application process completed and then it's just waiting to see if I land the grant. I think it should be a no-brainer, since the WIA program is designed for people who are displaced from their previous employment by technological advances: I fall into that category very nicely. It pays the tuition and costs for retraining and provides continuation of unemployment benefits during the training period. This should help me make it to the other side of this scummy mess we shall come to know as the Summer of '09.

The mourning continues for the two swell ladies who filled my life for so many years, but there's also progress on the personal front. I don't think Mom or Kittie would want me to dawdle, no matter how sad I'm feeling over their departures. More likely, they'd kick me in the ass if I tried to waste time right now.

And one big thing is different this time around: I'm a married person and I have a husband who is really supportive of me and loves me deeply. Things have been rocky financially (though not desperate), but our relationship is going strong.

Steve's doing well. He's pressing his boss to take him back full time (he was cut back to three days a week while business was slow, but the last two months have posted nice profits), but the old gent is hemming and hawwing. I'm feeling really hopeful, though, because the old guy realizes they can't do without Steve. What's more important, his wife knows it, too, and she seems to be the only one that can push him to make a decision. And she really likes Steve.

Is being married and going through all this any different from being domestic partners and going through all this? You bet your ass, it is: Because my mother died knowing that I have someone who exchanged vows of commitment with me before witnesses; that we took one another's hand in matrimony, not simply filled out a contractual form that was notarized and validated by the state; and because my friends and family know what marriage is. And so do we. It makes the intolerable tolerable until things get better.

So why don't you straight people stop knocking it?