praying for stability

One thing I'm seeing right now, and an impulse I am going to have to fight giving into, is the "turf war" - that is, in bad times, you don't just protect your own little patch or appropriation, but you try to get some of the other guy's, or you make the other guy look like a bad guy somehow.

It's a divisive and disruptive tactic, and I think it's encouraged by whoever the Disruptor is in a situation. (And yes, I used the capital letter with consideration there)

People lose their grace when they're afraid. I'm having to be careful for it not to happen to me.

I do have some plans. Beyond the harsher budgeting (no book, yarn, or fabric purchases for a good long time. Not sure what I'm going to do about Spring Break, I had thought of taking a 'fun day' during the break but that may turn into a day at home instead), I am going to do some professional development to show that (a) I am not stagnating and (b) to try to make myself seem like I'm a little less dispensible:

- do some technology training, including doing the certification for online teaching.
- see if I can do a professional talk at a spring program here.
- maybe, next summer, if I don't teach, see if there are either online courses plus a short course somewhere, or a summer-long course somewhere I could go in range management, with the idea that maybe I could tool up to teach that some day.
- maybe look into what small grants exist for things like equipment and supplies. On the one hand, I was griping this morning about how suddenly the new meme on the local news is HAVING ALL THE EDUCATORS WRITE A TON OF GRANTS IS THE SOLUTION TO THE EDUCATION BUDGET PROBLEM while totally ignoring that (a) you can't get paid out of many of these grants, so you are doing even more work for even less money, (b) many of us don't have grants administrators so we have to do all the paperwork (which is considerable for some grants) ourselves, (c) many grants are limited in what they will fund and to whom, and (d) they are competitive, meaning you may put in what feels like endless hours for no return at all.

I dunno. The big buzzword in a lot of fields now is "disruption" and in my mind, "disruption" is a dirty word - in a lot of cases it means "replacing stuff that worked but cost some money with stuff of an unproven record but that looks a lot cheaper on paper and employs fewer people." And in some cases people get hired on at big bucks to bring these "innovative disruptions" and in some cases it's little better than a curative tonic made out of apple juice and beet leaves.

I wish I could ban two concepts, or rather the need for them: "Doing more with less" (Which eventually becomes, "Trying to get blood from a stone") and "The New Normal."

I am better positioned than some to survive this because I don't have dependents (no kids outgrowing their shoes) and I'm generally good at being frugal even though I haven't had to in recent years and I have no debts to pay off....I own my house and car outright and thanks to the magic of being a TA, I have no student loans. But it still makes me worried and sad. I probably worry about money more than I need to.

I'm tired. And I'm sad. One of our people is in the small group let go because they were non-tenured and therefore unprotected. Oh, the person can probably get a teaching job in the science department of ANY school in the state - they are very good and have the personality for working with even resistant students and my chair said she will write this person an extremely fine recommendation - but I'm sad this person is gone. I'm sad I'm having to strictly rebudget my life now. I'm tired of "doing more with less," I'm tired of having to set buckets out in the hall when it rains because the roof leaks and there's apparently no money to fix it, I'm tired of worrying every time I use some kind of consumable supply that I won't have that supply in the future. I'm kind of out of energy for dealing with it any further and I am praying for the grace and strength to respond lovingly to:

- any hint that we were previously overpaid and this was a "necessary correction,"
- students making jokes about the furlough days being taken to give them "days off" from class
- people asking me to take on extra thankless non-task-related work because I really don't want to
- just in general to keep some kind of equanimity in dealing with  other people when I want to alternately cry and hide in my house.