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11/21/2004: "where to begin?"
After a long, long period of neglect, I think I might be picking Not From Toronto up from the dusty corner in which I left it many months ago and dusting it off. So much has happened, and so much is still happening, I hardly know where to start.
How about a brief rundown on what's going on to being:
1) Back in July, shortly after my latest entry, my son was born. So now I have a 3.5 year old daughter and a 5 month old son. Whee!
2) Work was keeping me extremely busy from April through to now. I was on a really interesting project, and then moved onto a very frustrating project, and ultimately ended up doing both. My business on the interesting one killed my drive to do Not From Toronto, somehow.
3) I've started actively searching for people to help me start an intentional community.
4) I got laid off from work. Permanently.
Number 1 is great - we've adjusted well, my daughter loves being a big sister, and my son is all smiles and happy screeches and drool (and the occassional cheesy spit-up). Number 3 is interesting, but I've only just begun, and I may be walking into a bureaucratic nightmare. I'm still in the early stages.
Number 2 would be worth writing about, were it not for number 4. Yes, as of Wednesday, November 17th 2004, I was laid off. I keep telling myself that at least this time it's a step up from April 2002. I was fired then, whereas this time they actually still like me, they just can't afford me.
The problem is that the company is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Suppliers have been putting them on credit hold for months now, and it's to the point where they can't even order on COD. As far as I can tell, as soon as a few more suppliers refuse to send material, production will cease, cashflow will run out, and the whole company will fold under. That doesn't make me feel any better, because I'm still just shy of Christmas, out looking for a job with barely even 2 weeks of severance.
My one ray of hope is my last job. I talked to my former supervisor there, and they're short people in the group I worked in. With luck (and prayer), I'll be able to get back in there on contract to fill the gap between now and when I figure out what the hell I want to do with my career.
And that's what this has really boiled down to - I'm no longer sure that my career is right. It makes perfect sense for me to be doing what I'm doing in some aspects, but after fighting tooth and nail for 13 months last time to find a job, if this time around it isn't a helluva lot easier, I'm going to wonder how it is a university-educated professional like myself can't find a job when it's that much easier for others with much less education to do so. Why can't *I* work on an assembly line for $25/hour, plus overtime and shift bonus? Argh.
Hopefully I won't have much time on my hands from here on out, but until I have a job, this is likely going to be my place to vent. Stay tuned.
