Lately, the majority of writing I do has been for articles and it’s been challenging at times to carve out specific time blocks to write. Nevertheless, here’s an article that any working adult may find helpful. Let me know your thoughts!
9 Signs of a Toxic Work Environment & How to Protect Your Mental Health
It’s interesting how an upcoming milestone birthday can make you question your life in great detail. There are these invisible benchmarks that people are judged from that indicates where they “should” be at a certain age. There are always choices to be made and sometimes these choices have to be made blindly because all the information isn’t available. I’m becoming a bit more comfortable with trusting my gut and evaluating my decisions based on my long term goals. I’m pretty much convinced that I want to retire. Not that I won’t work but it would be great to free spirit it. No expectations and true responsibilities. However, the path to getting there is not as clear as I would like it to be. But it’s a great time to take some inventory and really focus on what exactly is important.
I ran across an article that was in response to a tweet that went viral. You can read the article here. Basically the author talks another the fact that most marital relationships aren’t truly 50-50. Women complete the bulk of household duties. This is absolutely true. I did a dissertation on it. However, women who want men who are providers or more specially black women who want men who are providers are labeled as gold diggers. The interesting thing that the author points out is that black women tend to out earn black men in many instances so then they also carry the financial responsibility of the household. From this aspect, a 50-50 split is an upgrade. I’ve met a lot of guys who aren’t comfortable with solely providing financially for a household while their wife works part time jobs or stays at home with the kids. Their mindset is if they have to go to work 40 hours a week, their wife should too. I’ll admit that I’m a bit old fashioned when it comes to this but I’m also trying to be realistic. I would love to have a husband who considers it his primary responsibility to provide for the household. But I also don’t want to be in a situation where he exerts all control over finances because he earns it. I just hate the idea of being in a relationship where I have to keep tabs on whose turn it is to pay. I don’t want to worry about that because there’s the understanding that he will. Not to say that I’ll never do it, but I want it to be an option instead of an obligatory split. Is this even possible these days? I’m doubtful.
I can across an interesting article that coincides with what I’ve been thinking hard about these past few days. It’s about black people and wealth disparities. You can read it here . As the product of two generations of a middle class family (grandparents and parents), I don’t have anything to show for all their hard work. No property, no trust fund, no assets. Just a crippling amount of student loan debt. And I know that I’m not the only one in this predicament. Growing up, my father worked and my mother stayed home to care for us. She decided that she wanted to raise her children and homeschool us so she did. As a result, we lived in a single income household. A phenomenon that I’m experiencing now with my household of one. There are so many things that I want to do now but I won’t be able to because of my financial obligations. Transitioning to teaching or a post-doctoral position would require a pay cut of about 20k to 40k per year and I can’t afford that. This year one of my goals is to become more financially literate and I’m working on it. However, I wish that I didn’t have to start from the bottom and if I ever make enough money to afford kids I want them to have a different experience. It’s like I’m starting off at a disadvantage and don’t have the opportunity to at least start at baseline. Definitely tough.
A few days ago I shared an article on social media about the ways the social work is failing. While it was very thought provoking, the author also talked about ways to remedy the problem. As someone who has worked in the field for almost 7 years, the looks on people’s faces when I tell them that I’m a social worker can be quite comical. Unfortunately there’s still a prevalent belief that all social workers do is take kids away from their parents. Social work is one of the only professions I know where you can have a masters degree, two years of supervised experience, a clinical license AND make $17 an hour. That number isn’t arbitrary. It’s actually what I made when I first relocated to my original state of residence. The fact is that we are often overworked and not fairly compensated for our services. Burnout rates are at an all time high because we can’t even afford to take time off and it’s sometimes a struggle to pay bills and make student loan payments out of the pittance we’re given. Don’t get me wrong, you can make a decent living as a social worker but it will probably entail working more than one job, working in an administrative capacity, or being an entrepreneur of sorts. With mental illness continuing to be a growing concern, I wish that the growing demand for mental health providers like social workers translated into an increase in compensation—like it has for nurses. Something definitely needs to change and maybe the change that is needed is that of a union. While I don’t have all the answers, I believe that this topic deserves more discussion and also subsequent advocacy.
I hate moving but I love traveling. There’s always more to think about when you’re relocating and carrying your belongings with you. A little more than a year ago I gave up my apartment, put my stuff in storage, and moved across the country for an adventure. More recently I’ve moved back to my home state and into a new apartment. I love my own space. One thing that’s been helpful in all my moves through the years is that I have a great mother who always wants to help (take over). I’ve flown her in to help me out because I’m on a tight deadline. She’s amazing at being organized but bad at listening to instructions. She likes the moving in process and will inevitably bring in things she likes with the explanation that I don’t have to like them but she’ll use them when she visits. It’s a fair price to pay for the assistance. I don’t know where I’ll be next but maybe soon I’ll put down some roots.
There’s something about the month of May that makes me reconsider my entire life. It’s like an internal check-in to evaluate how the year has gone up to this point. It’s also my half-birthday month–which is another reminder that I only have 6 months to go until I’m a year older. Last year around this time I was living in Atlanta and working in a job I didn’t really love. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then and I’m happy to say that I’ve had the chance to travel a bit more because that was one of the things I resolved to do last May. Since then I’ve traveled to Las Vegas, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Spain, England, France, Italy, Monaco, and Malta. In addition to that I quit my job and moved across the country to California. It’s been eventful to say the least but I’ve learned a lot and have also acquired a new skill set. Working in a busy hospital and coordinating care will definitely have you learning a lot of new medical terminology that you didn’t learn in graduate school. I also decided to try my hand at teaching and am now facilitating a class of 16 graduate students in a weekly online class. It’s been challenging but fun so far. A lot of decisions were made last May and we’ll see what happens this year.
I honestly can’t believe that the month of May is here. It seems like January was just yesterday. There’s so many things that I want to accomplish this year and none of them seem quite feasible with a normal 9-5 job. So we’ll see what happens. I think it may be time to move back across the country and do something different. I’m definitely greeting this next half of the year with a greater sense of purpose and desire to travel more–or at least spend less time working. Just gotta keep pushing.
I’m always inspired by people who go after what they really want to do and who live life on their own terms. I’ve always had a love hate relationship with work. Don’t get me wrong I like helping people, but doing it constantly just drains me. And while I don’t have a bad attitude and I don’t snap at people when I’m tired, it’s just exhausting at times. Unfortunately human need isn’t confined to normal business hours and it’s hard for me to leave something without a sense of completeness. Working in the healthcare field adds another layer because there’s literally always something to be done. Even leaving after a long day of work means that there are still things that have to be done. Today I felt inspired as I received several phone calls from recruiters regarding open positions and I was strangely comforted as those phone calls reminded me that my job is definitely needed. I spoke to a colleague of mine who only takes one contract job per year and spends the rest of her time writing and doing talks on things that she’s passionate about. Having a purpose in life is so important and I think that it’s good to balance helping people with also taking care of yourself. I definitely need to do better.
I have to say that living out a suitcase makes you really think about your life in detail. Moving to a new place is something that everyone should experience at some point. It’s absolutely exhilarating, exhausting, and downright scary to move across the country, get a new place and start a job within 72 hours. Living out a suitcase really makes you think about the value that a lot of people put in material things. While I miss cable, feeling somewhat stable, and coming home to my dog every day, I’m glad that I’m doing something different. I have a job that I can quit in 12 weeks without any hard feelings and an opportunity to do it again as much as I’d want to. I don’t miss paying rent and it’s cool driving around exploring. Despite a horrific new schedule and the uncertainty about where I’ll live next, I’m ok.
Alisha's Angle 