On The Chopping Block

In which my excellent paying rent job gets pulled out from under my feet

When I was daydreaming in Mrs. Sechrist’s fourth grade class in Lodi, Ohio I never fantasized about being an Editorial Coordinator when I grew up. No, instead of doing my arithmetic word problems I dreamt of the day I’d be a famous artist in New York City.

And, yet, here I am. Editorial Coordinator and Medium writer. In New York City so that part worked out.

It started out innocently enough: a New York Time’s want ad for a part time job at the Hospital for Special Surgery (formally known as The New York Society for the Ruptured and Crippled) as an editorial assistant. I was working my way slowly towards an undergraduate degree in Literature Writing at Columbia University and the job I had at the time was going away courtesy of Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to eliminate part time jobs in the city’s Small Purchases Unit.

What’s an editorial assistant? In medical publishing the editorial assistant is the pain in the neck who keeps after peer reviewers to get their reviews submitted on time, dammit.

I interview well and got the job.

And I stayed on that job for twelve years. Yes, readers, for over a decade I was the thorn in every orthopedic researchers’ side and I’m talking internationally. The position was part time and, at the beginning, it was per diem. That meant if my butt wasn’t in the chair I didn’t get paid. I worked every holiday that fell on a weekday and never had health care insurance until the last five years when I nudged my boss, the Editor in Chief, to nudge HR to change my job description.

I’d probably still be there if it weren’t for the capitalistic obsession with cutting costs and maximizing profits.

In 2013 my boss gave me a heads up that the position was slated to be eliminated in a year. The society that owned the journal and the publisher put their heads together and determined that it would be much more “cost effective” to have the editorial assisting work done in-house by the publisher.

Buh-bye, loser.

By this point there were no longer New York Times want ads. One went looking for work on the job boards like Indeed, Monster, Velvet Jobs, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Craigslist. I see that look but it was through Craigslist that I got my start as a writer in immigration law.

I loved learning all about each client’s field of expertise, then taking their actual accomplishments and weaving them into a compelling narrative so that they would gain that O-1 employment visa and get to work at the top of their discipline in the US. And I was good at it as the recommendations on my LinkedIn page make clear. But one too many batshit crazy immigration lawyers calling me pathetic and slow or lying about making me a W-2 employee on the payroll did me in.

In some other more perfect incarnation I would be able to earn a living wage drafting and revising O-1 and EB-1 petitions for “aliens of extraordinary abilities in the arts, science, and business” and not have to work for sociopaths and liars. No such luck and after four years and six immigration law firms I gave it up as a lost cause.

In April, 2018, I got a job offer through LinkedIn and jumped at it. I was ready to settle into the dreaded 9 to 5 prison sentence in exchange for a living wage, decent health care insurance for myself and my partner and a professional employer.

Instead of being an editorial assistant this time, however, I became an Editorial Coordinator with my own office, the best pay I’ve ever earned, really top notch health care insurance, 22 paid vacation days a year and a housebroken boss. Being over the age of 60 with zero retirement savings and a fondness for sleeping indoors I faced down my horror of the rat race. I grabbed my rat hat and threw myself into the fray. This position was much more demanding than my job at the other journal but I asked questions, made mistakes, and in time I hit a nice plateau. It’s not particularly engaging work. It can be tedious and a bit dull but I don’t hate my job and I don’t feel sick to my stomach on Sunday nights.

I’ll admit that I chafe at early bedtimes and having the alarm go off at 6am seems like a violation. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it and, for the time being, that’s not my life. But everything in this world involves a trade-off. There’s a price to be paid and I’m ready to pay that price.

My partner and I just returned from 16 glorious days travelling from sea to shining sea in Spain and Portugal and I got paid for the time I was away. Moreover, we’re gearing up for my 7th and his 13th time at Burning Man and I will be paid for those two weeks away as well. Being seniors in denial we are both benefiting handsomely from my top of the line health care insurance. When payday hits I still have money in the checking account. This, friends, is unprecedented in my experience. I have always leapt from one paycheck to the next hoping for a soft landing.

And my definition of solvency: Being able to buy anything I want in the grocery store without checking the price. This is the good life, baby.

And it’s got an end date.

My wonderfully well-behaved boss is stepping down from his position of Editor in Chief of the journal and when he does I am officially out of a job. October 1 is the end of the Good Times.

I have my moments of fury and anxiety but mostly I’m ready to roll with whatever happens. I’ve got a recruiter wanting to meet and the possibility of another editorial coordinator position with a non-profit. Could happen. My current boss has said he’ll help me find a “good job” within the organization and that would be groovy (not that I’m counting on it).

But I have to admit that a part of me longs for the days when I worked two or three part time jobs, stayed up as late as I wanted, rolled out of bed whenever I happened to wake up, wrote stories and then did some work and then wrote some more. I always used to say that given the choice between time and money I would always choose time.

I was wrong.

I’ll be doing whatever it takes to keep working full time for as long as I can. And I will continue finding ways to keep writing and traveling. This, my friends, is the very definition of a luxury problem.

Ain’t it awful?

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