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You're listening to StoryHelix: intertwining
stories past, present, and not yet
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Imagined in Lane County, Oregon.
What's up, earthlings? I'm Leah Velez,
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and I'll be your host. The
story we're about to hear was recorded at
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Oakshire Brewing Company in the Whiteaker neighborhood
of Eugene, Oregon in early 2022. Let's open
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up our ear nuggets and give it
a listen. My name's Ian Winbrock.
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I lived in Oregon after working in
politics for five years in Sacramento, California,
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in the state capital, in a
city called West Sacramento, and I
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worked for the longest serving mayor of
the city of West Sacramento. His
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name is Christopher Cabaldon, and he's no
longer the mayor there.
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One of the first openly gay mayors in the United
States. And I worked sixty to eighty to hundred hour weeks and
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I was just getting burnt out.
I was having pretty pretty intense wear and
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tear on my psyche and I needed
to transition. My partner at the time
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really supported me moving to Oregon.
So I looked at Grad school programs where
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I could get my MBA
and that I could work for the university.
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So I could get a substantial discount off
my tuition, and the University of
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Oregon in Eugene fit the bill.
So I came to Eugene, where I
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have friends as good as family who
have lived here for many, many years,
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and I came and visited, decided it
would be a good place for my
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partner and I to transition to, and
with their blessing, I moved here in
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December of two thousand and eighteen.
I hoped that this would be a fresh
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start. I hoped that this place
would be a community where I could cultivate
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my passions, where I could grow
professionally, where I could grow personally,
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where I could foster the type of
civic involvement and innovation and community engagement there
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were the defining features of my life
philosophy up to that point. Working in
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politics was the living embodiment of my
identity because I'm super passionate about how people
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represent themselves and collectively co-create change. So it was a big leap for
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me to leave something that was so
foundational to who I was and move into
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a space where I could still be
that same person, but in a different
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way, and I was hoping that
Oregon and Eugene was going to be the
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place for me to do that.
Interviewer: Does it feel like home? Ian: No,
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no, it does not. I've experienced
a lot. I have experienced a lot
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of personal pain since I've been here. I felt almost immediately a sense of
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betrayal. My partner said that she
supported me moving here, but broke up
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with me pretty quickly after I had
moved here, after about two months,
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and then she started hooking up with
a former friend of mine and neither of
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them were honest about that. So
it felt like a big sense of betrayal.
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Also, my employer deceived me as
to what my job responsibilities would be
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and what I would be doing.
So it became pretty apparent that my job
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was not what I had signed up
for and I pretty much failed the GMATs
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because I was heartbroken from the
breakup. I got dumped. And from the
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from the job realization. So I
was kind of rudderless. I haven't been
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single in like five or six years, and my job was grossly unfulfilling.
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So I started looking for employment elsewhere
and I started looking for a sense of
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fulfillment outside of my job, which
was really new to me, too, because
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it was the primary source of my
fulfillment. Which led me to a lot
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of service work. I started looking
for opportunities to serve on nonprofit boards,
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City Commissions, service organizations,
to be able to get that kind of
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civic engagement, sense of self co-creation of community, cultivation of fair governments,
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like all the values that I used
to live through my professional life I
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was gonna start living again through my
personal life, by hook or by crook.
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And yeah, to Eugene's credit
and Oregon's credit, this has been
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a place where I have been able
to do that-- just not during my
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professional life. Outside of it.
Yeah, there's a wonderful things. I've
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met you. By the way,
the person who's interviewing me is my girlfriend.
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Her name's Emma Jones, and so, yeah, I would say one
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of the the most impactful experiences of
me being here is falling in love again
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and being open to falling in love
again, and that's been the treasure of
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my time here. I
love you, Emma. Emma: I love you, too.
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Thanks for listening. You can find us wherever you listen
to your podcasts. If you've got your
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own Lane County story to tell,
we'd love to hear it
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at StoryHelix.Wordcrafters.org.
