(no subject)
So, here’s what’s been going on...
As most of you know, I was laid off back in January. My severance ran out at the end of March and I’m now on unemployment. I qualified for maximum benefits so money’s not an issue right now. And I managed to find affordable catastrophic health insurance. My day to day care is not expensive so my main worry was what would happen if myself or my husband had to hospitalized. I have plenty of money in the bank and in my IRA. So really, other than not having a job to go to every day, nothing to really complain about.
What I am having to deal with is essentially being abandoned by someone I thought I could trust; someone I was counting on for help and support. (And, no, I’m not talking about my husband. He’s asleep in the next room.) I’m not so much mad at this person as I am at myself for allowing him to lead me on. I know better than to do that. I know that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. That’s what being a skeptic is all about. And even though there was this niggling little voice in the back of my head for the past two years telling me not to trust him, I did anyway. That was my fault, not his. He is who he is but I followed anyway.
So I’m basically on my own in trying to find a new job and while I’ve been applying for lots of positions, I haven’t had any return contacts yet. I’m afraid, at this point, the problem may be one of credibility. I believe the reputation of the college I’d been working for the better part of the past 20 years is so trashed that no one is taking me seriously. The fact that all of my references are from the college’s administration and the person mentioned above, who I’ve totally lost contact with, isn’t helping.
This morning I applied to the local community college, where I worked right after I graduated from grad school, to teach a class or two in the fall. Hopefully they will want me back since this is completely independent of the other school. I didn’t really want to start over again from the beginning but I may not have any choice. I can make a decent living as an adjunct math professor. There two community colleges with a total of four campuses in my area. I know others who do it.
So that’s the personal stuff. As far as the online stuff goes, I felt like with everything else going on, I needed a change. No offense to LJ or anything, but it’s not taken seriously as a blogging site. I tried the wordpress thing but didn’t really like the platform that much. Tumblr is place to be right now, so I’m moving myself over there as “akaMathChick.” It’s a site I’ll be able to make available to a wider range of people and it has better Twitter integration.
I’ve already been asked about the name. It was actually given to me by a student when I first started teaching 20 years ago, in the early days of the internet and email. The community college hadn’t adopted email yet. I had a dial up AOL account so I set up an id that my students could use to contact me. There was this one student in the class who thought himself a comedian. He was fun to have in class but he was a real ball-buster. When I mentioned the email thing to the class and told them I would give them my AOL email address to use as a contact, he chimed in and asked, “So what’s your id? Mathchick at aol dot com?” The whole class started laughing and I replied, “No, but it will be as soon as I get home.” That was my email for years after that.
Anyway, the new site is called Math and Food if you have seen it yet. I’m going to move all of my recipes there and use it to post anything that I find interesting. I’ve been doing it here but I just don’t have the audience here that I used to. I’ll cross-post here for those of you not on Tumblr. If you are over there or even if you’re not, check me out, follow if you like it. I will follow you back. There is also an option for RSS and they have an excellent mobile site. Easy access and integration that LJ can not compete with.
So, that’s it for now.
L8R