{"id":238,"date":"2016-07-12T11:29:39","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T15:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/?p=238"},"modified":"2019-06-11T15:13:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T19:13:55","slug":"logistical-masochism-part-ii-the-turning-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/07\/12\/logistical-masochism-part-ii-the-turning-page\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scenic Route Part II – The Turning Page"},"content":{"rendered":"

April and May passed in a blur of long, empty days. I would focus on photography as much as possible (still without a drop of internet!) and Russell would waste the majority of his waking hours at a company who had reneged on all their promises and betrayed all trust. We would live for the weekends when we would take break-neck trips to a handful of New England destinations that were originally on our travel list, assuming that a glimpse was better than nothing. To give you an idea about Matamoras, PA: the closest Target is a 25 minute drive down the interstate and there is only one radio station serving a hundred mile radius. The RV park is full of hardened construction guys working on local projects and pipelines who would probably share a hearty chuckle at the notion that someone would actually pay for photography, \u201cWe all got phones, don\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"websize-7546\"

This is where we’ve been living<\/p><\/div>\n

Melodic View Photography was at a standstill and Russell and I were feeling trapped in a mutilated and distorted version of the very life that once promised so much freedom.\u00a0 He\u2019d updated his resume and was getting a few calls \u2013but nothing was happening very fast. Things seemed they were bound to continue in the same way\u2026until the night of June 6th<\/sup>. Russell\u2019s boss emailed him late at night and told him to work from home the next day. As this was contrary to everything they wanted to enforce schedule-wise, we figured something was up. We had a long heart-to-heart and agreed that leaving this job, even without having something else lined up, was probably better than letting things continue. Basically, having no job was better (in the short term) than this job. And, sure enough, the same decision was made for us when the third party recruited called the next morning to inform Russell that the company had \u2018opted to end the contract\u2019 and were letting all of their contractors go.<\/p>\n

The measure of relief tinged with anxiety in that moment is very difficult to quantify or explain. We had our time back \u2013 our lives back. But, we were staring into the face of a finite amount of income. And the dark shadow cast by 8 bitter months of unemployment in Houston last year during the oil industry down-turn were all too ready to cloud any liberation we felt. How long would this job hunt take? Would third party recruiters bog down the process and gum up communication like they did last year in Houston? Where would he be able to find a job? And once he finds something, how would we rally the strength and resources to relocate everything to a new place just a few short months after the last taxing cross-country move?<\/p>\n

\"A

A rainy weekend of Vermont covered bridges!<\/p><\/div>\n

One thing was clear: we both needed a vacation. And a weekend of car camping in Vermont was just the thing to reset us for the work ahead.<\/p>\n

\n

This is the first part of a 4 post series:<\/em><\/p>\n

Part 1<\/a> | Part 2<\/a> | Part 3<\/a> | <\/em>Part 4<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April and May passed in a blur of long, empty days. I would focus on photography as much as possible (still without a drop of internet!) and Russell would waste the majority of his waking hours at a company who had reneged on all their promises and betrayed all trust. We would live for the… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[9,3,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/websize-7546.jpg?fit=1500%2C1001&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p913i7-3Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesweetroam.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}