After a month of heavy posting I shut up and then leave some stupid tweet about having a really bad day… pretty crappy, eh? Not to make any excuses, but it comes down to this: layoffs suck. They suck a lot less when you’re not on the receiving end, but they still suck. And when you run the IT portion and get stuck doing some of the dirty work well… you can guess.
Just in time for pundits to start declaring “the recession is over” my company downsized for the first time in its 25+ year history. Obviously I couldn’t mention any of this before it happened because… duh. Once the deed was done and the press release hit the wire I still needed some time to gather myself. My office hidden in the deep back corner of a half empty building only shields me so much.
It’s not like I’m going to discuss specifics about my job anyway, but know that everything hit like a ton of bricks just when things seemed like they had turned a corner. The stress resulted in at least half a dozen gray hairs popping up in my winter beard which has since been trimmed down to disguise them and may disappear completely. It also beat down my immune system enough for a cold to grab a hold of my head. Fortunately the rest of the household remained unaffected while I took up residency on the back couch and passed out by 9 every night.
For now my head is buried in the sand far enough that things seem to be back to normal. In all seriousness there’s nothing here for concern beyond the need to tighten our belts a little “just in case”. Maybe I’m just an eternal optimist, but things have a way of working themselves out for me.
