AVanBoeningMHT...No More! (#305 and #306 on the life list:)

Hello, internet.  Its me, Allison.  Remember me?


Yep.  You recognize me with a martini, right?  Well, I have a lot of words for you.  Its my last night of being an employee of the hospital.  My last night of being someone else's employee, period!  I'm kind of a mess.  Let me elaborate, as you must be bored, if you are reading my blog.  First of all, I'm downright sad to be leaving the hospital.  Much as I can't stand the way our program is being run these days, I have always had such good, close friendships with a good chunk of my coworkers.  I'm not sure if its the fact that we work in mental health and therefor have similar personalities or sense of humors or what but I have formed some really great friendships here.  This has been my employment home since I graduated from college.  Eleven years.  That's one third of my life thus far.  For about 8 of those years, I came here for more than 40 hours a week.  I got attached.

Aside from missing my current coworkers, I'm really going to miss the kids.  Its a pretty rare opportunity that we have in our program, to spend time with kids who are in crisis.  Since I started working mostly night shifts, I haven't spent a ton of time with the kids and I miss them.  It will be so strange not to have that connection to youth any longer.  I have to say also, that doing this job felt sometimes like I was actually making a difference.  Obviously I got paid, its not like I was volunteering.  And more often than not, the kids don't seem to visibly take much stock in what we say, but there were those rare moments that I saw kids improve and learn and smile and laugh because of something that our team of people did and that just kind of gives a different meaning to a job than just being the place that signs your paychecks.  Our cleaning job is hugely rewarding as well, but its for much different reasons.

And the biggest question of the night...AM I MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE?!?  I think I've said before how much I hate grown up stuff, like retirement funds, insurance anythings, blah blah blah.  I might be the most immature 33 year old that exists.  But when you work for a company big enough to take care of most of those things for you, it doesn't really matter how immature you are.  When you ARE the business owner, you have to start figuring those things out.  You have to learn about IRAs and mutual funds and The Affordable Care Act and, like, budgeting.  GROSS!!!  Can we please just go drink martinis???  Somewhere in my brain, I just always assumed I would have the hospital job to fall back on, if cleaning didn't work out or didn't quite pay the bills.  Or heaven forbid, I get injured.  I mean, my business largely depends on my physical health!  Poop!

Now that I have deep breathed my way through my 43rd panic attack of the last 24 hours, maybe I should focus on what is good here...I will have more time for my family and friends.  There will be no more scheduling around my night shifts for a family or social life.  Or holidays.  I have worked at jobs since about 1997  that have required me to work holidays.  It will be so awesome not to have to miss out on festivities because of work any more.
I will have more weekdays on which to clean.  I am freeing up 6 weekdays per month for cleaning and that is pretty huge, considering how much Tosha and I can get done in a day.  Hopefully more time for us to work on the side of our business that we currently neglect like marketing, paperwork, other grown up things.  I think I am rubbing off on her in the area of immaturity:)
I can sleep like a normal person.  The girls that I work nights with and I have had many a conversation about how NO MATTER WHAT, your sleep is never good enough when you work nights.  And most of the time, you only allow yourself a few hours of the crappy sleep and that is just so bad for your health.  So bad.  I am certain that an improved level of health and energy will come along with my new schedule, which leads to so many other positive changes like more exercise, more cooking, less snaking on junk food just to stay awake.

While I know that this is a very good decision and the natural progression of things for my business/career, I am nervous about the next few months.  I need to buy a new car and its been years since I have had a car payment.  I have never before had to make health insurance payments.  Its the winter months, so Brad's paychecks are leaner than they are when the weather is nice.  I may have to drink fewer martinis.  They are expensive.  But I am thankful.  I also need to thank my little family for allowing me to participate in my own little experiment of being solely a business owner.  Well, I go back and forth between wanting to thank them, and wanting to take Brad by the shoulders and shake him really hard and scream, "Don't trust me to do this!  We will be homeless by June! Who allows their wife to quit her job when they need a new roof???"  If I did, I'm sure he would just calmly tell me, as usual, that it will all figure itself out and be fine.  

Brad and I had dinner at Jack and June a few weeks ago before we went to Catching Fire (which was an AWESOME movie).  This is my food.  Maybe its lame to take pictures of your food, but this was a caramelized onion grilled cheese and roasted Brussels sprouts and soft pretzels with blue cheese dipping sauce.  So there.

  In case you're curious about how "Obamacare" is affecting my insurance shopping experience (and since I can't ever resist giving my completely uninformed political opinions), I will say that it seemed shaky at first.  There was not a singe insurance agent who could give us any information for a few months.  And the quotes I got seemed high with very high deductibles.  It was frustrating, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be left at that.  And low and behold, I spoke with my agent just the other day and she said we needed to meet asap, as provisions were being made, policies were getting cheaper, deductibles lower and so on and so forth.  I also had to remind myself that up to this point in my life, my insurance has always just seemed free to me.  It comes out of my paycheck before it ever reaches my pocket and in my limited little brain, that means its free.  I am very confident that The Affordable Care Act will undergo enough revision and tweaking that it will do what it was intended to do, and have little more than the normal rate increase impact on folks who already have insurance by the time all is said and done.  I will be the first to admit it if I'm wrong though.  I do really think we need to give it a year or so and see how things are in 2015.  Rome wasn't built in a day, kids.