Today, March 24th, was my last day at my job.
Way back when Chinami was born, we were a struggling low income household just trying to make it in Hawaii. I was doing babysitting and freelance translations and transcriptions while being a stay at home mom to Chinami. After she turned 1, I made the decision to start putting her in a preschool and working part-time. However the schedule and cost of preschool was prohibitive to any jobs I could find.
I found a job that made it work. A part-time position at a well known "elite" Japanese travel company. I would start at 4am and finish by noon, and be on a full-time schedule. My title was "ASAICHI", or "morning no. 1!" and my duties were to safely guide our guests to the airport, make sure they boarded their planes to the neighbor islands, and then go back to the office and do office work for a few hours.
My airport duties were very simple and the customers were usually very kind. The office work was a bit more challenging but I enjoyed the mixed Japanese/local environment and got along well with everyone. However my job duties changed after a while, and I was being sent out to "help out" with customer service departments. I felt redundant and not challenged. It was around this time I found out I was pregnant with my son, so I took this as a sign and I reduced my hours to part-time, and concentrated on only doing the airport runs as I would be able to continue these no matter how everyone else's schedules changed.
And I continued with my schedule after Chinami started kindergarten and Kairu started part-time preschool. Yasushi and I coordinated our schedules and for the most part, things went smoothly. I joked that I would probably be doing this job forever.
However, the writing was on the wall. The number of passengers in the bus every day were very gradually getting less, and the cost of the staff and transport was getting to be disproportionate to the amount of profits. My company did what made the most sense, even if it was a difficult decision for us. They contracted my job (and my 3 co-workers' jobs as well) out to a different local company, to combine transport, cut costs, and maximize savings for the customers and profits for the company. And I fully agreed with their decision.
They gave us this news in January. The new contracts would begin April 1st. They also gave us a variety of options so we could decide to stay within the company if we wished, or we could try and find a job somewhere else and they would support us with unemployment papers, etc.
At first, I looked through the job list and shook my head. Mostly 9-5 office jobs. Impossible with kids in school and a chef husband.
I looked elsewhere. There were a lot of jobs I was interested in, such as companions for the elderly, house cleaning, night auditor, overnight security guard, overnight concierge, ESL teaching, but there was always some reason I gave up. I don't have experience, I don't have a driver's license, they never answered my inquiries, etc. Strangely enough at this time, people I had hardly talked to started getting in touch with me again with job opportunities. One fell through almost immediately, and one stayed in limbo for a long time until I was called in for an interview....this was a Japanese teaching position in a private high school. I made it until a final interview with the head director of the school, but in the end the position was offered to one of the other candidates, possibly because I didn't have specific high school Japanese teaching experience. At this point, it was March. I started to get anxious.
If everything else failed and I was desperate.....well there was always the supermarket and the fast food places down the road to put in overnight shifts.
I looked at the job list the HR rep had given to me. There was one position that sounded intriguing. A call center. With overnight shifts. But native level Japanese ability was required. It sounded pretty difficult, but maybe possible.
I started getting super stressed over the possibility of losing our family's insurance even temporarily. If I become unemployed or underemployed, we would be without insurance, ineligible for Medicare but still struggling, and the only choice would be for Yasushi to take a pay cut to get insurance through his job.
I went to the interview, and got the job offer 2 days later. And they offered me an hourly pay that was higher than my current job, and higher than many of the other jobs I had been considering.
So yes, it was a very rough couple of months and it was not helping my anxiety and depression, but I pressed on and I never gave up on myself, the job search or my mental and physical health. Just like most of the difficult experiences I've had, I can learn from it and keep building and growing.
And now I feel like I am free from that lifestyle I was living for the past 4 years. Every day, I had to make sure I slept before 9PM at the latest, or else I would be extremely anxious about my ability to wake up for work. Because unlike a normal wake-up routine, I also had to take care to wake up as quietly as possible as not to disturb my family. Even on my days off, I had to take care to keep a similar sleep schedule, or else it would mess up my body's rhythm. I rarely went out after dark, even for kid-friendly events. And not being home in the mornings, even on holidays, meant I had to say "no" to a few school and social obligations as well. So even though I'm sure the next 3 months of probation/new job training will be pretty hectic, and the start of my overnight shifts as well, plus a 4 mile commute by bike will be pretty exhausting as well, but I will have a lot more freedom in my schedule with this new job.
I'll miss my 3 co-workers, the rest of the office, and all the drivers and staff at Hawaiian Airlines, Airport Security, TSA, etc. etc. Everyone was so friendly!
My first day is tomorrow, an 11 hour shift! I think I will go to bed a little later than usual tonight. And then I will wake up a little later. I think I'll enjoy that.
