Unemployed

In March of 2012 I will be unemployed. This seemed like forever a year ago, but some days it seems like it’s in a few weeks. That’s right, I have a stimulus job. I’m a recipient of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as ARRA. A two year grant written by The University of Georgia was written to fund this job, and I monitor the work done by the Weatherization Program in Georgia. I inspect a nineteen county area covered by two action agencies that perform the actual work. There are twenty or so monitors that cover the entire state, but we only see each other at trainings. We will all be unemployed very soon.
I did not vote for the administration that put this program in place. This is the truth. As much as I have enjoyed this job, I won’t vote for this administration when it is time for re-election. Would it save my job if I did? I doubt it, but I wouldn’t vote for them anyway. The program needs to run its course like any true contract; it must have a beginning date and an ending date. Make way in the line at the labor department? Nah, I can always go back to real estate or some of the other businesses I’ve had before. I hope to do some private energy auditing and testing as well, but the paying public’s response to this has been slow. I should be ready for a new venture because this job was meant to be a “breather” anyway.
But right in the middle of my working vacation I learned a new way to look at construction and energy consumption. Actually the only time I thought of energy consumption was when I wrote my monthly check to Georgia Power, but I thought of construction all the time. I learned that good enough can cost you a lot of money in the long run. I learned what insulation actually does and does not do. I learned how to build an energy efficient home for basically the same price as an energy hog. I learned a lot, but I mainly learned to think about energy…period. Now I want to spread the word!
I will admit that my eyes glaze over when people talk about polar bears and ice caps; things that I can’t see. Things that really don’t seem to apply in middle Georgia. They glazed before this job, and hundreds of hours of training later, they still do. I know they are real, but I there is just too much other stuff to think about. It’s kind of like watching tornado victims out west. You feel terrible, but in a long distance (reduced) sort of way. This is human nature; you can only stand so much.
So my job will end. It needs to end. The Weatherization program will basically end too. The government is not a giant bank that finances our every need. But whether you agree with the program (or the administration that put it in motion) or not, you should take advantage of what it has done. You should capitalize on the knowledge your tax dollars have paid for. I won’t go into great detail about the living conditions I have witnessed in the last year, but I will say that you can only imagine. But the work done on these homes is only half of the program. Yes it is the half that most people think of when they think of government waste and corruption, but it is accompanied by another part that is often not thought of. The other half created jobs. The people that took these jobs are now some of the most highly trained in energy usage in the country.

We, as tax payers, must take advantage of this knowledge. Do not let your tax dollars go to waste. What would you do with a few extra dollars a month? Extra money that is really yours anyway; money that you just give to utility companies. Even if you disagree with the current administration’s stance on renewable energy, windmills and solar power, you have to agree that saving money is a good thing.