“Put them in trauma”

Back in October—just a month after I moved my federal employment from the General Services Administration to the Department of Homeland Security—ProPublica reported that one of the architects of Project 2025 had this to say of federal workers:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

“We want to put them in trauma.”

Six months later, Project 2025 is in full swing, Elon Musk and other “officials” have reduced the federal workforce by at least tens of thousands, and the man (Russell Vought) who expressed his desire to traumatize federal workers is now the head of the federal government’s Office of Management and Budget. And I, like many of my fellow civil servants, am both traumatized and on my way out of federal service.

Worse still, much of my work during my time with the federal government was removed, along with entire teams I’ve worked on.

But hey…someone did write a song about me. :)

Leaving SAR

Both related and unrelated to my employment situation, I’ve also left the search and rescue team. My last mission was a body recovery from the Sandy River.

I’m proud of my work on the search and rescue team, and I’m especially grateful for the opportunity to train new recruits in land navigation during my tenure. But given everything else going on right now, volunteering with SAR became untenable.

So what now?

I’m not sure. I’ll likely take a short break from employment and try to settle my life into some new rhythms.

It feels like starting over.