Items

• 2020-06-12

  I can't leave.

  My wife and I moved to an expensive metro area for her job last year---it's a specialized skillset in a limited market that doesn't pay well, but one she's very passionate about. She has since been furloughed (two months to start, officially TBD for an end date), while my job has moved fully remote through the end of the year. I hate this job. I was already looking for other work shortly after we moved here. There are no job prospects in this area (even if I wanted to go outside, which I don't), and more employers in my industry shifting towards remote work means that suddenly I am in competition with everyone else globally for every position I go up for. We have no idea if my wife is going to have her job or not next month. Our lease on our apartment has 9 months left on it. On my salary + her unemployment, we can barely afford it now, but the real estate market here is so bad that we definitely wouldn't be able to afford anything else when our lease is up at the rate things are going. I cannot quit my job or we will be homeless, with or without my wife's job coming back. If her job doesn't come back, we will be stuck in this lease for 9 months for no reason. My life is a prison cell without a door or window. There is no way out that I can see. The chop of low-flying helicopters and the whine of emergency sirens every night make it hard to sleep while the world burns. I can only hope that something better is born from the ashes, and that I'll be able to see it before I go.