This week was a bit crappy. On Monday there was a off-site psychologist
meeting where we discussed strategy for the new administrative change up.
Basically our chain of command is being reorganized. And with that brings new eyes and in this
economic climate, cuts are always a possibility. My school district is pretty
bloated when it comes to psychologists.
I immediately surmised this when I came on board. At my former district I was four days a week,
had two elementary schools (one of which was the largest) and two special assignments. The psychs in my new district are full time
and have maybe two little elementary schools, or maybe one junior high that has
two grades, or one high school ( think that one psych gets the screw job). All one big administrator needs to do is
compare the ratio of school psychs to students of our neighboring districts,
and they will know where to cut.
Now, the school psychs in our district are by no means
riding easy street. They are doing tons of things beyond testing, whereas most
districts simply use us as testers. But
at the end of the day if someone is counting beans, they are not going to care
about our array of skills. Since I am the last one in, I will be the first one
out. The group sat around for about 37 minutes talking about how to defend
ourselves from cuts and if cuts happen how will they take up the
"slack". I sat there having mounting anxiety. To me I am not slack, this is my livelihood.
I am the breadwinner of the family. I
have been having anxiety all week. I have been trying to talk myself off the
cliff. I remind myself that the budget is set for a year, this is all
hypothetical, it is out of my control, that I just need to focus on the
present. I was somewhat successful.
I just want to breathe a bit, relax. In the past almost four years we have: survived through a yearlong
deployment to Iraq, got engaged, moved across country, got married, began our
marriage long distance for five months, closed down a life of 37 years, job
searched in the south, got pregnant, birthed a human, figured out how to take
care of a human, figured out whether we wanted to stay active duty military or
not, job searched for the west coast from the south, took three cross country
flights with a newborn for job interviews, left the military, packed-up and left the south, drove
a u-haul towing a car across the country, moved into the in-laws for six
months, began attending University, joined the Army reserves. continued to job
search, got a part-time job, part-time job turned into a full-time job, moved
out of in-laws into our own place, collapsed.
I just want no big changes. I feel a bit selfish even
saying that since we ended up at the finish line that we so hoped for. But, I just want to plan for nothing but the
groceries that need to be in the fridge.
No big discussions, no hypotheticals, no fact finding and most of all no
anxiety that goes along with the uncertainty of how are you going to put a roof
over your heads. I know that life can throw you major shit balls and we have no
control over that. I get it. But I would like to hold onto this awesome job and
have this crucial variable locked down.
So I am doing my best not to think about budget cuts
until they are real. And know if it does occur it is a year off. And that I will
have boots on the ground here to help me find another. I am going to focus on the fun summer we have
ahead, because we do have lots of fun plans.
Breathe in, breathe out. It will all be okay.
