Hmm. Nice, I can continue to feed my family.

[mastertwisted]

Although I love my job and believe in NASA as an employer who makes a positive impact on the U.S. and world, and though I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out I was not going to be furloughed, I am damn sick and tired of working at the whim of a government who can't work together well enough to keep its own people on the job

Comments

[chapel_of_words]

I don't think it's a matter of who takes it more seriously. I take my job seriously enough to be away from my family 30-45 weeks out of the year. And a few other things I'll be able to discuss in a few weeks should they come to pass. I didn't mention on my LJ but had the government shut down, I would've lost a once-in-a-life opportunity which I have worked and toiled on for the last three years, beyond possibly my job.

But I also recognize that regardless of what value I provide, and/or even what efforts I make, I am *only* there because someone else has had some of theirs taken away to pay for not only me to be there, but everyone around me. The government doesn't just take it from the kid flipping burgers to get their WoW fix, but also from the grandparent flipping burgers because they can't afford to retire. That's the money which funds your agency and the one I work for. And everyone in between. They take it from my father-in-law who's construction company has contracted from 50 employees to 5. When I lost my job in 2003, should you have been compelled to buy Radiant pizza-inventory software so I could continue working at that company and not be subject to the "whims" of the tech bust? Certainly I still needed to feed my family. So why shouldn't have your hard-earned money gone to Radiant?

So yeah. It is important *how* that money is spent, and what it is spent on. Because it comes at a price.

Also as we've integrated federal services into more and more aspects of society, the sustainability of those offerings is important. If there's a debt-spiral, it won't be an orderly wind-down of services, so that people can plan their alternatives. It will just be a sudden cut, like what we're seeing in some cities out west and many countries in Europe.

When I take a job, I like to think that some capricious political wrangling isn't going to put me in a spot where I can't pay my bills. I am a responsible man, who has been working for over 30 years,

Then you might want to reconsider leaving the public sector. Because the private-sector is far more capricious and has far more wrangling that puts job stability into peril than any of the government Agencies I've seen. You have to justify your existence each week, each month, and each year. And often for the most stupid, petty and irrational of reasons because there isn't near the level of oversight of decision-making which comes in the form of federal policy & regulations. It's "what have you done for me lately" rather than a recognition of "you've given several good decades."

If you are still interested however in that transition, I am happy to still help as I offered in the past. But if you think it will be "easier" or "less anxious" somewhere else...I can't offer much assurances that it will be. What I can say is that the skills that got you were you are today: hard work, smarts, persistence, are just as valuable in many places as they are for you in your day-to-day job now. And whether it's working retail, flipping burgers at WoW, staying at NASA, or taking a private-sector job equivilant with your skills and pay; you and yours will get through okay. Two years being unemployed taught me that we have a lot of inner resilience, especially in a family unit, that comes to the surface when things get tough.

At the end of the day that's what's most important. The family. Everything else IS just theatrics. =)

Tim C.