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.

a few months later, in march, i gave notice at monarch insurance and left to go manage the democratic party of hawaii office. it was a great opportunity, one that more or less fell in my lap and i jumped at it as i saw it as the official start of my career (generally) in hawaii politics. it was a great job. i loved being there, loved the volunteers, and loved the work. unfortunately, my time there was short live as i was let go not more than six months later. i was told, at the time, the decision to let me go was the result of the party’s poor financial situation, though since then i’ve become suspicious that there were alterier motives involved….

thus started my first foray into the unemployment system. as a result of the significant bonus i collected at the beginning of the year, i qualified for the maximum allowable unemployment insurance benefit, which was definitely enough for me to live on until i found another job.

it was only a few months later, exactly one year after i saw many my colleagues let go, that i started a new job as a legislative aide for the 2010 legislative session for representative hermina morita. i had applied for the position of office manager, but that job was given to a woman returning to hawaii from the mainland who had held the position before. i was a little bummed, but it turned out to be fine. it wasn’t long after session began that i realized i would have been wholly ill-prepared to handle job.

i loved my time as a session staffer, however temporary it might have been. i learned quite a bit about the mechanics of the legislative process, had a great time with the others in the office, and mina became one of my favorite legislators. she was smart, passionate, progressive, and pragmatic. it was a wonderful experience and even though i had taken a cut in “salary” from what i had been collecting from unemployment, i’d do it again in a heartbeat. still, it was a temporary job and come the end of session, i was once again unemployed.

stay tuned for part two….