Archive for the “Work” Category

I can’t believe that it’s been almost two months since I last sat down to write.  When I first started this blog I didn’t foresee a time when weekly updates wouldn’t be the norm, but lately I’ve felt like I barely have time to get things done, let alone to sit down and babble about whatever’s on my mind.  It’s funny in a not-so-funny way, but ever since I lost my job and gained an extra 40 hours a week, I seem to have less time to get things done than before.  Did I somehow actually lose time?  Or has more just come up to fill in the gaps?  Or have I just lost the will to do anything but watch the hands on the clock spend ’round and ’round?

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Life has been a little crazy lately.  I was laid off from my full-time job effective the end of December, and have had no luck in my ongoing search for new employment since then.  The only thing keeping me from having a panic attack is the fact that I am on severance pay until the end of February.  However, come March I will have no income rolling in and that’s when the real panicking starts.  I made the decision recently to begin seriously pursuing beginning my own IT consulting business.  I’ve pondered names, domains, clients, and everything the business would entail, and must admit to being very overwhelmed.  But it’s something I want to do, so I started the research.  I just renewed the lease on my apartment for 6 months with the goal of getting a house come summer if my consulting business is successful.  But then I was informed that you can’t qualify for a mortgage if you’re self-employed unless you have 2 years of records showing sustainable income.  By summer I’ll be lucky if I have 6 months of records.  So I had to choose:  do I pursue my own consulting business and begin doing what I’ve wanted to do all along, or do I try harder to re-enter Corporate America and thus qualify for a mortgage later this year?  I can’t do both.  So which do I sacrifice, and which do I pursue?

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I woke up this morning to find an email from a recruiter waiting for me saying that she’d seen my resume and was interested in speaking with me.  I emailed her back and then called a couple hours later to speak with her about a potential position she wanted to place me in.  It was a helpdesk position similar to what I’m doing now, but second tier instead of first level support like I’m suffering through currently.  I wasn’t too excited about it at first, but a job is a job and I told her I’d be willing to come in and discuss it in person.  She told me the salary range that the job offered, and it wasn’t quite I’m looking for in my next position, but again – I have rent to pay and can’t be too picky.  We scheduled the interview and I got off the phone feeling like I might at least have a position to fall back on if I don’t find anything better.  If only I’d known then not to get my hopes up.

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I’m faced with a moral dilemma.  I’m due to elect my benefits for 2009 by next week.  Even though my job is being discontinued at the end of this year, my benefits coverage extends at least a few months into 2009, and longer if I so choose.  One of the options I have when making my elections is to have a Flexible Spending card.  To my understanding, what this does is allows me to purchase medications and use for medical procedures like a credit card, and then the bill is gradually deducted from my paychecks throughout the year.  I was recently made aware of a very big loophole in the terms of the flex card, and I’m not sure whether or not I’ll be acting on it.

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A meeting was called yesterday by the Vice President that oversees my work location, and it was then that she announced the entire service center would be shut down, and all employees laid off.  Some people cried.  Some made jokes to break the tension.  I stood there trying to soak it all in.  Everyone knew it was coming, and try as we might to pretend it would be a long time from now, there’s no denying it any longer – we’re all out of a job and it’s time to move on.

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