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I worked at Marshalls in Boston, where I live, as a cashier for about 15 years.

In the middle of March everything really started closing down. We had a couple of months of paid furlough. We were all at home. The store was entirely closed. Then, around May they started getting ready to reopen.

Things were still pretty crazy in terms of the pandemic. As soon as the city allowed people to go back though, Marshalls then set a hard date for the reopening. I believe it was June 11. After 30 days without taking shifts, I’d be considered a non-return, and automatically punted.

I wanted to extend my leave a little more, so I wouldn’t have to come back immediately. I wanted to wait until the beginning of the fall. I was allowed, by store benefit, up to 60 days of announced leave. According to benefits, I had it.

I spoke to a manager. They said, “You have to file through the online portal that you’ve been checking in with us this whole time.” So, I filed through that.  Two weeks later, when I spoke to a separate manager, they said that this wasn’t even the right way to go about it. I had to talk to the company HR directly.

They were putting me through this rigmarole to see if I was willing to come back—because if I wasn’t they’d find somebody else. I felt like they had boxed me into that decision. Basically, I was given a fake task to keep me satisfied—or give me the illusion of doing something—until it became a make or break situation where I had to say, “I’m coming back now,” or “I’m quitting.” It was like they only told me then, after the furlough, I got the answer: “We won’t certify this leave.”

I finally got fed up and said, “I’m not coming back.”

After I gave my resignation, I was penduluming between relief but also a kind of guilt. On the one hand, I was relieved that I was able to make this choice and ensure my own safety. But at the same time, I felt this terrible guilt. You’re doing this after 15 years, you’re giving up this job you were doing. You have other coworkers in that job coming back. What makes you better than them?

I saw one of my coworkers on the train as I was going somewhere. I don’t know if she didn’t recognize me or didn’t want to talk to me. I wonder if they feel like I’ve abandoned them. I’d worked there for 15 years, and I’d kind of gotten used to it as much as you can. It did feel a lot like Stockholm syndrome. Am I going into a situation full of even more unknowns than the one I’m leaving?

Right now, I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do. On the good days when I’m able to calm down the guilt and anxiety, I feel like this is kind of liberating because I’ve been doing some things I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve been trying to learn Japanese through Duolingo and those online learning programs, and now I have a chance to really focus on it even more because my mental load isn’t as taxed.

And, there’s more time to work on my art. I’ve been a fan of Japanese animation since high school. About the time that I started my job of 15 years, I was also taken as a volunteer for Boston’s anime convention, Anime Boston. I liked to illustrate and draw comics in my free time, and I showed them some examples of my work. They asked me to start drawing designs for them. Could you draw pictures of our convection mascots? Could you provide designs for merchandise we have for the convention? We have branded tumblers, keychains, patches, and pins. They really like the look that I did for patches and pins, and I’ve been doing a patch and collectible pin design for them every single year. That’s been my main legacy from working for them.

I was thinking, if there was a way I could turn this art I do for free into something more self-supporting, could I become a freelance artist because I have the time to support myself? As per my anxiety and my guilty personality, I never really felt I was good enough to make a job out of the art I’d do online or for this convention. If the convention has had me for 15 years, maybe what I produce as an artist is good enough to start charging?

I really have to keep telling myself things aren’t over just yet. Maybe it’s time to look at something more—what I want—than what I just need to get by.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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