Round and Round

I consider myself a planner. The sort of person who also has goals set and a destination in mind at every turn. Seldom does anything ever go as planned, of course. Now that high school and college are finished, I'm discovering that the future is becoming a lot more hazy than I would care for.

Consider the terms of my current lease. I broke up with Lia in July, immediately after signing the lease. Lots of foresight there, clearly. The last several months have been a weird mixture of angry door-slamming to reluctant acceptance to "let's try be friends." Lately it's been kind of a blend of all three. A day or two ago, Lia broke the news to me that her brother and his roommate might be interested in taking the lease over in April. While that's amazing news because it gets us out of this awkward living situation sooner, it makes me wonder what else is in store.

A few months ago, my boss took the opportunity to remind me that my job will be essentially "over" when this giant project gets finished. Originally, that was supposed to be done in 2013. Over the last couple months, the other coworkers in my department have been running out of work to do, so the big-wigs have been taking the work that was meant for me and delegating it to the others to give them something to do. According to my boss's projections, I MIGHT be done as early as August. I genuinely do not want to leave this job sooner than I have to, but my boss has been dodging my questions about the subject for the last couple days, so that's generally not a good sign.

This puts me in quite a spot as far as concerns my next lease. Let's assume I'm out in April. I'm not going to want to take on a year lease if I may by jobless in a few months. 6 months might work and month-to-month would definitely work, but leases like that are hard to come by these days. That also brings up concerns about the roommate situation. Alexus and I like to spend a lot of time together. I realize some of you frown on that since it's only been a month, but that's how both of us like to pursue relationships, so it's working out great as far as we're concerned. I don't see that changing anytime soon. If I would go the roommate route, though, I think any roommate would probably get sick of having another frequent visitor pretty quickly. At the same time, living "alone" is a lot of undue financial strain. Even if Alexus weren't in the picture at all, I really liked the freedom of living alone and having free-reign of my territory. Not to mention that if I do end up jobless, even for a month or two, it would screw over a potential roommate pretty badly.

My original plan was to finish up my dog-training classes, practice until 2013, and then see what I'm comfortable with at that point. I'm not going to have time for that if August is my deadline. The last time I met with my mentor, she asked me what I wanted to do with the certification. I told her I wasn't certain yet. She did tell me that she knows that the Washington County and Ozaukee County Humane Societies need a lot of help from experienced trainers. I was unclear if those were paid positions or not, but it's a lead and I have a reference, I suppose. I really don't want to work graphic design again unless I have to. I've done it for years now, and the more it goes on, the less I think it's my "calling." I suppose if all else fails, I can take a pay-cut and check into my options working as a trainer at a Petco or Petsmart. I'll look for graphic design again if I have to, but I'd prefer to avoid it if possible.

In the end, I suppose here's what I'm left with. If the lease is done in April now, I would probably need to have a good idea of what's going on with work at some point in February in order to formulate a better plan of attack. I've discussed this with a couple of coworkers here, and they've reminded me that NPH doesn't grant any sort of unemployment because it is a non-profit that is in the church industry, and therefore not eligible to be used for such a thing. I'm not entirely certain how the legality of everything works there, but I'm trying not to bank on it as an option, just in case. Thoughts? Anybody?