Not Feeling Good About Job Offer in NYC

[Grower]

About the ag. Our goal is to gross $50,000 a year within the next year or two selling at farmers markets, and the only equipment we have is at tiller. I don't have to have it (I could use pigs), but for now it makes things easier. So since I'm in the process of doing it, yes, I can tell you, it can be done. Right now we have off farm jobs, but my dream is to make a go of it here. Each year we get a stop closer.

My friends didn't take 15 years. The husband never did work off farm. From day one he was the farmer. Her specialty was the greenhouse seedlings, but she was involved in all aspects of the work. They did 90% of the work themselves, and hired a couple of high school kids to help out sometimes. Within 7 years, she quit her teaching job, and I think that was mostly because they had a child and she wanted to be home more. 

Now, with them, and with me, I'm not talking about doom survival here. We grow for market. If they didn't have a tractor and equipment, they'd either have to switch to horses or just grow for themselves. For me, I'm set up to switch to survival growing at any time. Less of the fancy greens and a lot more potatoes and a grains patch, along with other root/storage vegetables.

Some of you guys can speculate all you want. I'm doing it.

[Zac]

About the ag. Our goal is to gross $50,000 a year within the next year or two selling at farmers markets, and the only equipment we have is at tiller. I don't have to have it (I could use pigs), but for now it makes things easier. So since I'm in the process of doing it, yes, I can tell you, it can be done. Right now we have off farm jobs, but my dream is to make a go of it here. Each year we get a stop closer.

My friends didn't take 15 years. The husband never did work off farm. From day one he was the farmer. Her specialty was the greenhouse seedlings, but she was involved in all aspects of the work. They did 90% of the work themselves, and hired a couple of high school kids to help out sometimes. Within 7 years, she quit her teaching job, and I think that was mostly because they had a child and she wanted to be home more. 

Now, with them, and with me, I'm not talking about doom survival here. We grow for market. If they didn't have a tractor and equipment, they'd either have to switch to horses or just grow for themselves. For me, I'm set up to switch to survival growing at any time. Less of the fancy greens and a lot more potatoes and a grains patch, along with other root/storage vegetables.

Some of you guys can speculate all you want. I'm doing it.

If you can net 50K a year producing agricultural commodities using only the labor of 1 person, I would be very impressed. 

I have read accounts of some small farms that have done relatively well selling mostly to gourmet restaurants and the like, but that is a very fickle market that is almost certainly suffering from the economic downturn.  Some specialty producers (like mushroom growers) can do quite well too, but are also subject to the same problems.  Many of the high margin niche producers are well compensated when people have lots of disposable income to spend in expensive restaurants and organic food marts, but their fortunes can change quickly when people are reduced to buying groceries at walmart and are more concerned about filling their stomachs rather than whether their food is organic, free range, and so forth. 

Locally in the Rocklin/Roseville, CA area (which is among the most affluent in the sacramento metro area), I have noticed a very visible shift from people shopping at expensive supermarkets like Bel Air, Nugget, and Whole Foods, to Walmart and Winco.  I disdain shopping at Walmart, but do most of much grocery shopping at Winco and Costco except for a few sales items at Nugget and Bel Air.  (I think even the sale items at Whole Foods are a lousy deal.)  I noticed the new branch of a local organic food chain that opened near my house, Elliott's Natural Foods, has almost zero business now, not that it was ever busy since it opened last year.

http://www.elliottsnaturalfoods.com/retailer/store_templates/shell_id_1.asp?storeID=20M18CNM5ES92JJ000AKHMCCQSHD8ED1

A big distribution warehouse for United Natural Foods (a large organic foods distributor) opened nearby recently too.  It'll be interesting to see how long they last. 

https://www.unfi.com/Default.aspx

[Grower]

Hide and watch.

And when you stop talking about what you have "read" and start talking about what you have done, when you know as many people as I do who are doing, then I'll pay attention.

[Zac]

Hide and watch.

And when you stop talking about what you have "read" and start talking about what you have done, when you know as many people as I do who are doing, then I'll pay attention.

If you can earn a good livelihood farming full time with unmechanized permaculture methods, I offer you my heartiest congratulations and best wishes.  That would be a remarkable achievement. 

[AreWeThereYet]

Maybe I should just go for it, and take the job if it's still being offered.  Especially if it's just for a year or so.  Then I can reset the unemployment insurance.  I'll have close to four hours of reading time on the train, every day.  And maybe meet some people in the documentary company who operate in the building and make something good. 

It sounds like you're not quite happy with what you have now.  So take that job for a year..save the $$$ and give yourself a goal at the end of that year and work for it during the year.
What you don't want is a year lost to work only to come back to what you have when you sound like you want something more.

[Patchze]

What I'd really like is for my father to stop acting like I'm 13, and get out of la-la land.  It's hard enough that my mom died a couple years ago.  He seems to have decided that I'm an adolescent forever, and that he has to check up on me up to four or five times a day to see what I'm doing.  And then he expects me to drive the 20 miles a few days a week to where he lives and eat out to dinner with him, and then drive 20 miles back to the town I'm living in.  And then when I get back home at night, he calls me up when I'm already in bed to see if I'm okay, or why I didn't give him a big enough hug goodbye.  I'm so angry and lonely.  I'm starting to wonder that if I took the job I've been offered, it would help to shake things up a bit, and get him to look at his life and start to wonder what he's going to do with it.  The world he's in is completely oblivious/delusional.  He thinks peak oil is a joke, and that everything is going to be fine.  And then there's my clueless brother and sister, and their respective significant others.  My brother and his wife want to start "having babies" after Christmas.  My brother works as a dispatcher of trucks that deliver set materials to daytime network TV shows, and his wife manages a collectibles shop.  My sister is getting married to her boyfriend next fall.  She is an administrative assistant at a commercial real estate developer on Long Island, and her fiance sells life insurance.  They want to start having babies right after they get married.  And my Dad is dating a woman who owns a small hair salon.  And my dad is spending his savings and unemployment insurance on an exorbitant rent, drives a Lexus SUV, still lives in the rich complacent town he raised the family in, and wasting his time spending much more than he has to.  And I'm dating no one, and feeling miserably lonely and enslaved.  I feel stuck in my family's delusional world, and, am essentially wondering how I'm ever going to escape it for good.  Now that my mom is gone, I feel that I'm obligated to be near my father and siblings.  Maybe if I took the NY job, it could be a kind of freedom from this bullshit that I've been putting up with since my mom died.  Maybe I'd meet new people, and learn new things, and have more of my life to myself again, reading on the train, socializing with people I'd be working with, and maybe providing some space for my father where a kind of sobriety can take the place of his complacency.  Maybe I sound like a dick.  But I just feel like the rate things are going at in the fantasy land of my family's mentality, they'll hang on to their complacency and emotional dependence, whatever it takes.  I need to say much, much more... 

[Chesyre]

in light of peak oil unless you are going to inherit something while it still has value , its ok to just write off toxic people from your life imnho 

[Baldwin]

My therapy plan:
~A new job.  Not even a "career"just something to earn money and meet people
~If you save some money, go somewhere exciting while you still can
~500 CC's of "Get Laid" (that's always a booster for me)
~See if you can help your dad.  I think he's trying to reconnect with you, but in a familiar way out of the past.  MAybe there is something that can re-establish a state of "We can have a loving relationship, but I am a grown man for God's sake."  If this is not feasible, then cut your losses. 
~If your siblings are breeding, they are beyond help.

[Patchze]

Thank you, all, again, for your insights and advice.  I feel like I'm getting closer to making a decision about taking this job.  I'm already hoping that he doesn't change his mind about it.  He said the job would be for a year or maybe more.  It feels good to know that that.  I was reading that book, Your Money or Your Life before, and it suggests that finite jobs enable people to put more into the work, and to plan for a more financially independent lifestyle once the job ends.  I have a feeling that the job, if I get it, wouldn't last more than two years.  And I imagine that two years from now, shit may be hitting the fan fairly hard in this country.  With that in mind, it seems like taking the job might be a better idea than exhausting my unemployment insurance and doing shit like taking permaculture classes and trying to find a local job working cash register jobs or waiting tables.  Maybe if I take this job, too, I'll find some way or somewhere to live where I don't have to feel obligated to spend my free days with my oblivious family and their mainstream media-fed delusions of endless comfort and fossil-fueled consumption.  On another note, I saw the movie, "Precious," tonight, and was floored and humbled by it.  I now feel as though I should never complain about my life ever again. 

[Doomsteader]

Thanks all, so much, for your insights.  I'm still very conflicted.  I read up last night on where I'd be working, if this guy who offered me the job really does hire me.  It's not so much of a property management company, as it is a simple real estate operation.  His parents started it many years ago.  It's a studio co-op building in midtown Manhattan, and has something like 60 units, most of which are private businesses.  There are just a few residential tenants.  The building has been in his family since the 1940s.  Some of the old tenants were popular artists and writers.  Ray Charles rented there for a time.  Woody Allen had operated out of a unit there for about 30 years.  The Rolling Stones rehearsed there once.  I found the story about the family and the building in a NY Times real estate article from 2000.  The guy who runs the building/business told me he needs a project coordinator.  The building next door is also owned by him, and they still haven't networked the computers between the buildings.  I know nothing about computer networking.  I told him I'd like to learn how, though.  I'm not sure if being a project coordinator means that I'd necessarily have to know how to run a network, or if I'd responsible for finding people who would.  There's also a documentary company in the building operated by another family member, and he said they'd need help every now and then.  He didn't say what kind of help, but, I'm flattered that he thought of me when he decided they needed help.  We'll be meeting in the city next Wednesday to talk about it.  I don't know if he'll still want to hire me or not.  In a way, I hope he does.  But in another, I hope he doesn't.

But my life on Long Island is fairly dull, or rather boring, enslaving, and monotonous.  Thank God for these unemployment benefits.  I don't plan on ever getting married (unless my would-be wife believes PO is real and doesn't want to have kids).  I just don't want to allow my life to become more enslaving and aggravating as it is now.  I live an hour away from where my father lives.  My mom died a couple of years ago, and my dad is overly needy and dependent.  He's just 61.  He was laid off from his finance job last year, too.  This was the time of year when my mom was sick, so he's in mourning and not sure what he's going to do with his life, even though he still consumes like he's still earning what he did before.  He dines out nearly five days a week.  I asked him if he wanted to come to NYC to see Mike Ruppert's Collapse with me, but he didn't want to.  He said there's plenty of oil left.  He also thinks the economy will recover, and that he'll be able to get a job soon. 

I rent a room for $700, in a house owned by a woman who's really nice, and is a friend of mine.  She was just laid off from her job at an interior design store.  I dread having to go back some day and live with my dad.  His head in the sand when it comes to dealing with reality.  (He drinks a lot.)  I like to think that I'll be free one day.  Thank God I'm not in debt, have a fairly low rent, and decent savings thanks to a car accident that almost killed me 17 years ago.  I hope I'm not the delusional one.  I just dread the thought of having to be in this dreadfully lonely, enslaving life of living in the status quo/BAU mentality of Long Island, NY.  Last night, I was at a big wine & spirits store that just opened up 50 yards from where I live.  They were hiring.  $15/hour.  I almost wanted to apply right then and there.  Free commute, plus extra hours that would otherwise be spent commuting.  I fantasize about flying to New Mexico (where I lived for two years not too long ago), buying an old RV, and moving to the mesa north of Taos: 
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq8BaSBuhuQ#noexternalembed     (that's a movie I did of shots and videos I took when I was there in August.)

Maybe I should just go for it, and take the job if it's still being offered.  Especially if it's just for a year or so.  Then I can reset the unemployment insurance.  I'll have close to four hours of reading time on the train, every day.  And maybe meet some people in the documentary company who operate in the building and make something good. 

Just a thought - Any chance of killing 3 birds with one stone?  By that I mean, any chance of them hooking you up with a free or low-cost room or studio apt in one of their buildings,thus eliminating your commuting time and expenses and eliminating the $700 a month you now pay for a room where you are?  If it was ME, I'd glady give up $5 an hour and work for $20 per, if it eliminated my commute and reduced my housing expenses.  Me? I'd look into it,and be willing to negotiate a win-win situation

[Ellie]

Thank you, all, again, for your insights and advice.  I feel like I'm getting closer to making a decision about taking this job.  I'm already hoping that he doesn't change his mind about it.  He said the job would be for a year or maybe more.  It feels good to know that that.  I was reading that book, Your Money or Your Life before, and it suggests that finite jobs enable people to put more into the work, and to plan for a more financially independent lifestyle once the job ends.  I have a feeling that the job, if I get it, wouldn't last more than two years.  And I imagine that two years from now, shit may be hitting the fan fairly hard in this country.  With that in mind, it seems like taking the job might be a better idea than exhausting my unemployment insurance and doing shit like taking permaculture classes and trying to find a local job working cash register jobs or waiting tables.  Maybe if I take this job, too, I'll find some way or somewhere to live where I don't have to feel obligated to spend my free days with my oblivious family and their mainstream media-fed delusions of endless comfort and fossil-fueled consumption.  On another note, I saw the movie, "Precious," tonight, and was floored and humbled by it.  I now feel as though I should never complain about my life ever again. 

I don't know - I would lose it if I had to spend two hours commuting each way on top of my normal work day. That job is going to be your entire life. Your weekdays will be completely shot and your weekends will be all about recovering from work and then getting ready to go back to work.

Personally, I would stretch out your unemployment as long as possible. If you're getting bored, try volunteering somewhere a couple of days a week. The fact is that your original post said that this job could be one year, OR several years, and if you quit you'll not qualify for unemploment at all, so if you found you couldn't take it anymore you'd either have to live off your savings or find another job right away.

TIME is one of the most precious things we have, and most of us don't have nearly enough. My advice is don't throw away this gift of time you've been giving for anything other than a job that you are absolutely and totally passionate and excited about, and, preferably, one that is a lot closer. (Do you really want to be stuck 2 hours away from home in a SHTF situation? Especially considering that that 2 hours would be a LOT more if the trains aren't running?)

[suburban_junkscape]

I would probably not take the job, just because I have a feeling unemployment insurance is going to go on indefinitely. Its already 79 weeks in many states and a new bill would make it 99 weeks. They need to keep the masses settled even if they have to print money to pay the benefits.

[LuaHasFreedom]

I'd move to New Mexico.

[peakoilmom]

I like the previous suggestion that you ask them if they have a unit in one of their buildings that you could live in. They really might like someone being on site most of the time, it would give you a free place to live and you would be removed from daily contact with your dad, but still close enough that you could go see him on your days off.

I think you might meet a lot of interesting people at this job. I'll bet the documentary people have already seen "Collapse"  ... and would be interested in talking with you about PO stuff. Who knows? You might find a whole new career through this move ...

Do it!

[s0cks]

I wouldn't take it.

You have already admitted that it would probably last two years, by which time things could be very unsettled with real shit hitting the fan. What then? You just lost two years that you could have prepared in. Ditch the offer and start looking for a local job (preferably part-time) to cover your expenses.

You're already getting into permaculture is that right? "The Permaculture Home Garden" by Linda Woodrow would be a good starting place. You could easily feed yourself on one of her "mandala" systems that takes no more that 2-3hrs maintenance a week (though initially it will take up a lot of time). Reading her book is great and really gets you into the motivational mindset.

If some people are to be believed, we may only have 2-3yrs of BAU left. Really, I can't stress enough, we really shouldn't waste that time.