april 29, 2010. it was the last day of the 2010 legislative session and the last day i worked to collect a paycheck for over a year. in fact, it would be 565 days, or one year, six months, and 17 days until i was once again a fully employed person, but we’ll come back to that in a bit….

like so many others, i’m sure, when i graduated college, i never imagined that i’d someday be a statistic collecting unemployment benefits, but there i was 565 days without a job, without a retirement plan or legitimate health insurance. while it has, at times, been frustrating, i can’t say i minded it all that much. i was able to really commit to the thing i’m most passionate about: politics. i can’t say i spent 40 hours every week of that 565 days doing political stuff, but i spent a lot of the vast majority of time doing just that and i loved it.

since january 2009, my life has been in some regular degree of transition. on january 1st of that year, asb-bishop insurance agency was officially purchased by monarch insurance services. as a result of that purchase, many people i had worked with for years, people who had worked at bishop insurance their whole lives, lost their jobs, including my immediate superviser and the agency manger. even with the huge bonus from the bank, it was a tough pill to swallow and it wasn’t too long before i started actively looking for employment elsewhere.

looking back now, i see clearly that the outcome the next two years can be traced back to that day and that bonus check.