On Being Promoted

I wish to share some good news. Tomorrow, I will begin my duties as a Records Lead at the law firm where I work in Boston's Seaport District. 

What this will mean is that I will be involved in billing with our vendors, approving time sheets and supervising records personnel here in Boston as well as in our offices in Los Angeles and in San Francisco. 

It remains to be seen if I will be visiting those offices, but I'm sure that could be a possibility down the road. Should this come to pass, it would mark the first time I've ever set foot in California. At the very minimum, I will need to familiarize myself with California labor law which is even more generous for employees than Massachusetts. Of course, I will also be attending a lot more meetings and mandatory trainings. But this will come with better compensation. 

To say that my return to Boston in May 2021 has proved to be fortuitous would be an understatement. Consider what I wrote in my year-end postmortem on December 31, 2022:

For me, 2022 was my best year in many years. Dare I say perhaps the best year of my life.

I say this in great part because I spent the entire year back in the Boston-Cambridge-Somerville area after having moved thrice between 2018 and 2021. Simply put I am where I want to be.

I also say this because I am in my best employment situation in a decade. It is the first time in a long time where I have been in an environment people where rely on me and where my knowledge and judgment is respected and valued. Granted my position is relatively low on the totem pole but someone has to keep the totem pole sturdy.

Since writing that entry I have continued to maintain the trust of my managers and while building stronger relationships in the firm. Because of this I have now climbed the totem pole a few rungs but remain close enough to the ground to keep things steady.  

Of course, there will be a period of adjustment. How long this adjustment will take remains to be seen. We will be hiring a new Records Associate to take over the position that I hold now in a month's time. It will take time to get him fully acclimated into the scheme of things as well. Fortunately, my managers are patient and understanding. This is key as this is far from a given in many workplaces. 

As the law firm in based in Boston, there is always much work to be done. But better to be busy than not. There are far worse things with which I could be occupying my time.

While I am confident that I will succeed in my new role, I am not without some nervousness in the recesses of my mind. Last night, I dreamed I was working in a grocery store where I was promoted only to have all of my work questioned and delegitimized before I awoke. 

Such worries are only natural. However, I do have a strong base of support at work and have no reason to believe this will change for the foreseeable future.

I suspect most people don't seek out to become a Records Clerk. When I lived in Ottawa, I spent 2½ years as a Records Clerk with what was then known as Revenue Canada. At the time, I was also working on my MA at Carleton University part-time. My ambition was to attain political work of some sort preferably with an elected official or in some capacity with the NDP. Aside from some internships with several NDP MPs and my involvement with the late Alexa McDonough's successful NDP leadership campaign in 1995, I never went far down this path as I had hoped. I did have some job interviews with a couple of NDP MPs, but nothing ever came of it.

When I got laid off from Revenue Canada late in 1999, I set my sights on finding political work in the U.S. Indeed, when I moved to Boston nearly 25 years ago it was as an organizer for the now defunct ACORN. This position lasted all of two weeks.

During my early years in Boston, I worked several jobs in the non-profit sector for a child abuse hotline and later in the vocational rehabilitation field. This did not prove successful either. While I was decent at these jobs, I generally found the working environment to be toxic and unfriendly. 

In late 2003, I found myself working as a Records Clerk once more this time for an insurance company in Boston's Financial District. Until my current position, this was my most successful undertaking as I worked in this role for nearly a decade before getting laid off. I spent a couple of years as a floater before starting to work as Records Clerk in a law firm environment for the first time a decade ago.

During this period, now with a more conservative outlook, I was also contributing articles to The American Spectator earning extra money. I was hoping to parlay this into other ventures. Although my articles would occasionally get mentioned elsewhere and I did a few radio interviews, most of the satisfaction I received was seeing my name online. Of course, I would stop contributing to The American Spectator when Bob Tyrrell told me to stop criticizing Donald Trump. It is a decision I have never regretted. Although I contributed some articles to National Review Online and a single article to The Forward while I was in Atlanta, my writing these days is confined to this space. 

I did attain a Paralegal Certificate from Boston University in 2016 resulting in paralegal work as a contractor for HHS for about a year before that came to an abrupt end. After a lengthy period of unemployment, I found myself back as a Records Clerk with another Boston law firm before transferring to New York six months later for yet another Records Clerk job with a different law firm. Then along came COVID which resulted in me losing that job along with millions of other Americans. Seven months later, I made my way to Atlanta for my first Records Lead position only to return to Boston seven months later. 

Amid all the tumult, I came to accept that I am a Records Clerk and that it was a specialty I could take all over the country but has been put to its best use here in Boston. I have paid my dues and am finally being rewarded for it. This has been a long time coming and it has finally arrived. 

Of course, there are no guarantees. We are 48 hours away from a presidential election. Should we see fit to return Donald Trump to the White House, the future of the United States and the world changes irrevocably on both the macro and micro level. If Jeff Bezos can kill a Washington Post editorial endorsing Kamala Harris to stay in good standing with Trump, then what could happen to a Records Clerk with a blog, however obscure, which is less than complimentary to the Orange One?

Well, I will cross that bridge should it come. At this point, I can only deal with the things with which I have some measure of control and as long as I can do that then this promotion will be a success. With that, I look forward to tomorrow.