Real Job

Since the second semester of my second year in optometry school I've been hoping for a "real job". It has taken 8 years to obtain said "real job".

The jobs Swell and I are moving around the world to take will pay well less than half of what we could make being optometrists here in North America but to be honest we haven't really been making a whole tonne of money the last two years. Working very part-time will do that to you.

I work on Saturday. I haven't worked since October 8th.

We leave Atlanta on December 13th to drive to Edmonton, Alberta for my brother's wedding/Christmas. During the 4 weeks between now and then I work 7 times and Swell works twice. Not a lot of fill-in work to be found in these terrible economic times.

After Edmonton we're going to drive to Washougal to spend some time with Swell's folks. I was very fortunate to find 4 days of work in Washington while we're there visiting. Rather than sit around doing nothing I'll be spending four of my days working for one of my classmates (we worked for her before we moved here to Atlanta). If our departure for the South Pacific is later than we expect I may be able to pick up a few other days from her as well.

This work, in the words of the lovely Martha Stewart, "is a good thing". We need the money to pay for 2008 taxes and to cover our moving expenses (for much of which we'll be reimbursed).

On Thursday, a week from today, I have to go to our condo's HOA meeting as I've submitted an application for the ability to lease our place under the undue hardship clause. I'll just be there to answer any questions and hopefully move the process along quickly. As soon as we have official permission we'll be listing our place for lease furnished. If it is not wanted furnished we'll have to move a bunch of stuff into storage.

Well first we'll have to rent a bigger storage unit and move our already stored stuff into the bigger unit and add our not yet stored stuff to the same unit.

Fun.

We hope to rent it furnished.

Our new jobs come complete with job descriptions. Mine is four pages long.

Swell's is three pages long.

Each description comes complete with a "reports to" section.

Swell reports to me.

I've already put her on notice.

I consider this my first real job as it is organized. Requires specific reports to be written and things to be done.

The job description has words like "liase", "implement", "monitor", "evaluate", "capacity building", and "collaborate" in it.

On the surface these seem like buzz words but they are words that are important to me. They are public health words.

It was in the second semester of my second year of optometry school that I went to rural Honduras to do an eyecare "mission". We stayed in tents and worked in unlit school rooms doing rudimentary eye exams and distributing recycled spectacles.

An eye opener for me.

I don't think its necessary for me to again espouse my disdain for eyecare missions. Suffice it to say this trip, in addition to my first trip to the occupied territories and reading about social justice, started me down the path to my first "real job".

It won't be easy but I feel very fortunate to be stepping into something that has a lot of groundwork already laid. I can do good work while learning from people who have already been doing good work. I can take what I know and apply it to a job that specifically states that it is designed with a public health perspective in mind.

I asked the group we're going to work with for a copy of the curriculum and was sent a 60 page document outlining the how and why of not only our jobs but the entire program. It is well written and it quickly becomes evident that this is not a fly by night operation but rather something that is designed to leave lasting change.

Better than that is that they ask themselves if what they are doing is working and if it isn't they hope to learn why not and make changes.

I've been communicating with a fellow who quit his optometry job here in the US to go to Haiti to start a clinic in an under served area. I applaud his intention but the more I think about it the happier I am that Swell and I are not off doing that somewhere. I have absolutely no desire to run a clinic in a developing country. This guy will be doing good work and I'm sure it will grow into something that helps a lot of people but I'd much rather try to teach 10 people to go out and do what I know how to do so that my efforts can be multiplied.

Not only do I not want to have a clinic in a developing country but I'm very happy to be taking a break from seeing patients here in the US. Its a tedious career. Tedious simply for the type of work Swell and I have been doing. In other situations optometry is less tedious but our opportunities have really been difficult. In only 6 years I've probably worked in more than 20 offices in 4 states. I'm burned out even though I had a 6 month break when in Palestine and have worked VERY part-time the last year.

I think Swell is to.

This will be a great change of pace.

We're both excited but a little wary at the same time. Worried about money. Worried about being so far away from home.

We expect a lot of visitors and hope to be in North America next December and January.

I'm sure I'll write a lot more about this "first real job" in the coming weeks. I hope you all don't get tired of it. This is more than a job to me it's the realization of a dream that started 8 years ago.

Not much else to talk about as we're just packing and wasting time.

The Boss

We got our job descriptions for our new jobs the other day. Today we're trying to get a bunch of stuff done so I finally had a chance to download said job descriptions and read them over.

Only important thing in the documents:

I am now the boss of Swell Mu ha ha ha

Catch up

Sorry for the poor quality pictures. We both forgot our cameras and had to use our phones

I’m sitting here in the “customer lounge” of our auto mechanic with nothing to do. We’re just doing routine maintenance on our car and getting it checked out as we will probably be driving the car across country in mid-December. I figured that while I wait I might as well use my time to update you on the going ons in our lives.

As most of you know we were recently in San Diego for the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon but not before a startling realization, which I’m not allowed to talk about, the previous day.

We arrived to a beautiful sunny day and would soon learn that San Diego is synonymous with beautiful, sunny days.

From San Diego

We ended up staying at the Hard Rock Hotel which was beautiful. Swell being Swell was dissatisfied with our first room – it was a handicap room – and had us moved to a different room on the same floor. The second room was right across the hall from the elevators and we had to deal with very, very loud music 24/7 but were very happy with the room. Swell was especially happy with the amount of lighting the room had. I don’t know why that made her so happy but lighting was paramount in her decision to say “this is the best hotel ever”.

After checking in we ran across the street to pick up my final program and other conference paraphernalia. We could see the conference center from our window and were very pleased that it was so close. Unfortunately (fortunately?) most of my events were at the opposite end of the conference center than our hotel was on so I still did a fair amount of walking.

First night's dinner across from hotel:

From San Diego

When I looked at my final program I was aghast. The program was the size of a large phonebook. It was somewhere around 500 pages. There was so much going on over the four days of the conference it was difficult to decide what to do and what to miss.

I really enjoyed the things I did. Very interesting scientific sessions. I also attended all of the business meetings for the Vision Care Section of the American Public Health Association. These meetings were on the dull side as I had no frame of reference for the discussions but very important people (especially as related to domestic public health eye care policy) were in attendance and it was important to show my face. I’m going to try to get involved with this group over the next year. It was difficult to volunteer for anything while there as Swell and I don’t really know what our coming year is going to look like.

It was very interesting to listen during the general opening session as well as to the tone of some of the scientific presentations. The APHA is a group that promotes public health policy in the US. It is a very liberal organization. It brought a lot of great joy to this Canadian living in the US with a wife who is unable to get individual health insurance when a very large crowd of Americans erupted into applause and cheers when a Thai doctor/policy maker wished that “you too will have a universal single payer health system soon”. This idea resonated throughout the meeting and I am sure the vast majority of attendees are on cloud nine with Senator Obama having won Tuesday’s election.
I’d love to be able to go back to the APHA meeting but as it’s held in November it may be somewhat difficult. We’ll see.

Swell spent a lot of time wandering the streets of San Diego. She was, of course, able to find a mall that she window shopped at.

We also ate out together once a day. We tried very hard to not spend money so we ate at the cheapest places we could find (still not that cheap) and also went to a grocery store to get some snacks for breakfast/lunches.

We did treat ourselves to the cultural phenomenon that is Pink Berry. And we were not impressed. Its just very sour frozen yogurt. Not that good. A little on the pricey side.

From San Diego

I skipped the entire last day of the conference and Swell and I took a ferry across the bay and explored Coronado.

From San Diego

From San Diego

We had a lot of fun and were sad to leave.

From San Diego

Since returning we haven’t been up to much. We created a long list of things we have to get done before we leave Atlanta. We’ve been trying to figure out what the best plan of attack is for getting to my parent’s place and her parent’s place. We’re trying to decide what we need to bring with us and what can go into storage. We applied for the ability to rent our place under the Undue Hardship clause in our HOA documents. We had a phone conversation with some folks that we will be working for/with when we relocate in January.

We’ve both had nights where we haven’t been able to sleep due to concerns with moving. We’ve both had days where we are really excited about moving. I think the excitement outweighs the concern. Our main concern is money. If we don’t get our place rented for a good amount we’re in trouble. If we get it rented for a good amount we’ll be able to pay my student loans and take care of our mortgage with enough money to pay our taxes for 2008 and 2009 and still eat.

Our lives are quite boring and we have very little work over the next 6 weeks.

Looking forward to the Christmas season and visiting family and friends.

Well that’s that.

Request

Since our family is in the business of changing dates of holidays, we'd like to request the postponing on "FUN-DO" for Halloween. We don't think we should miss this important holiday tradition because we are far away now, since we'll be there for a long time come December...so we expect an evening of "FUN-DO" come December.

Swell