I moved to Michigan in early 2002, shortly after Washington went boom and my then husband’s clients went bust.  There’s a tangle of reasons for the move to Ann Arbor, most of them seeming logical at the time.  Since I had always worked in DC or overseas as an adult, I have to say my work has always seemed pretty recession proof – dedicated to saving the world through subsistence wage level non-profit management.  Moving to here, it seemed the same at first, given the bubble that is Ann Arbor.

Sure, I’d seen “Roger and Me”; sure I’d known of the plant issues – even empathized with them given the family history.  Half my family are overachieving titans of industry, the other half lifelong union pipeline workers.    In the odd position of having the family outsider wacky artists for parents, I’d been able to observe the family dichotomy at a comfortable distance – the security, Hawaiian vacations and incredible family pressures and issues attached to the admirals and corporate senior vice presidents; the grinding skilled labour and concrete achievements that ended in winter layoffs of the pipeline workers, who would collect unemployment and enjoy the hunting season in Louisiana.  I could have gone either way, choosing to settle down with a bow hunting union man and spending five months of my life in the classic silver slipstream on whatever site he was working or taking my multiple masters to corporate world.

Late last summer I was working as a low level manager in a large local non profit when I was offered Director of Development in a smaller non profit in town.  I took the position, thinking it would finally allow me to show my relatively new town what I could do – and you know, it really did.  In nine months there I matched their last three years’ donations – in nine months, in Michigan, in the current economic climate.  And I wasn’t raising money for shelter animals or cute children or food pantries – this was an amazingly tough sell.  But I did it.  You could ask the four year old wonder boy about how many nights and weekends Mom was sitting hunched over a laptop, how many 7am committee meetings there were, how many times I asked him for five more minutes to finish something that stretched to another hour and a half.  But damn me if I didn’t do the hell out of it.  And it was about to get easier, the committees were running smoothly, the fundraising events were establishing a level of excellence and a sense of momentum and soon the freshman year of the program would be over and I could build on what I had worked so hard to establish this year.

Last Friday they laid me off.

Now, mission and development non-profit staffs are always somewhat stuck in a love-hate relationship; mission staff  think development people are crazed for worrying about the right shade of colour on a website and development people are usually the red-haired stepchildren of the organization, labouring away on a lonely aesthetes’ column and having to use words/ phrasing like branding, relationship building and  event environment in meetings where the other staff are literally trying to save a client’s life.

So, you could say it isn’t the easiest relationship.  And you could say that I understood that senior management saw me as the only non-clinical fluff they could cut as they desperately tried to maintain their programs.  And you could even go so far as to say that the pure marketing side of me wanted to offer them guidance on how they could continue to maintain a presence on the fundraising scene even without me there.

My astonishingly unquiet id wishes them and their short-sightedness to sink without a trace under the current economic waves.

So now I’ve spent a week going through the rituals of the laid off in Michigan.  I managed to register for unemployment – an amazingly complex proceeding requiring me to show up in an unsavoury part of town, presenting ID and resumes and figuring out quarterly income for the past eighteenth months before I could register online.

I was surprised how stressful letting everyone know has been.  I had to email all my outside committee members and development colleagues; striking just the right plucky I’ll be fine note while attaching resumes for them to forward and cravenly asking for references.

I’ve had to negotiate with the wonder boy’s preschool, which has been wonderful and cut his tuition in half.  I think it will be good for him to maintain routine, even though with reduced tuition and gas costs it now equals my food budget for the two of us, but for now, I’ll keep him on as long as I can.

I’ve cut cable and cell bills to the minimum I can with a four year old in the house – god only knows what tragedy would ensue if the daily spongebob viewing was gone, even though that may happen in a few months.

I’m really not anywhere near as desperate as I could be.  I qualify for unemployment.  I live in the world’s smallest apartment, my credit cards are paid off and I have some savings.  Realistically, it’s not anywhere near where I should be panicking, but then why do I feel the world is off it’s axis and I now am hanging by a thread while clinging to the hand of my four year old?

Given all this, I’m amazed at what my monkey brain has chosen on which to focus:  three days before I was laid off, I ordered a very inexpensive breed of puppy for the wonder boy from a breeder in Louisiana.  And here’s the really genius part – instead of paying shipping costs, I contacted my favourite redneck Louisiana cousin who is currently himself laid off from his work in oil leases and asked if he wanted to take a little puppy delivery trip using the shipping fees for gas money.  He loves travel and was thrilled with the idea, and suggested we tell my mother, so she could come as well. 

So here I am, ten days later, people have changed their schedules and are making arrangements, money with the breeder, four year old thrilled.  And really, it’s really not that much money in the big scheme of things, and really, having time to properly train the puppy may be the best thing that could have happened and really I am supposed to have interviews in the next two weeks for an even better job.

I have high hopes that my usual inherent self-confidence and belief in the universe will return by the time the money has gone; in the meantime, if you know of anyone’s who’s looking to hire…

(edited for title change)