laid off Jul 30, 2007 - 22:11 PM
Laid off today. Last day is August 10th. I've spent the last 5 years of my life there. When I started, I was taking over from a webmaster who was a definite short-timer, had little interest in helping the new guy. I had a week to learn a CMS (Content Management System) from this guy. Second day of training, the site goes down. My boss tells me I need to call the IT manager and the outgoing web master together and lead the meeting, bring the site back to life. The IT manager and webguy have been there for like 5 years. This is my second week and I needed to lead them, get to the bottom of this.
Fast-forward five years and I have gone through 4 complete redesigns of the website, transitioned several extranets and intranets, and am one of the main movers of the new portal solution. I look onto my flagged items in Outlook and it's a sea of red flags. I know I will fail someone, be forced to fail. I make reasonable timelines, but unexpected "emergency" requests take up my time. One item is to redesign a site so that it looks like the corporate site. I tell them it will take some time, and at the moment I am slammed - no bandwidth to speak of. At the meeting, the Bitch says "But there's only 8 tabs." I've heard this sort of amateur response I'm not even fazed. Redesigning someone else's work is always a challenge, and something that looks like it will take a week, can sometimes balloon to a month - or two. I stick by my guns and I am right - it's over a hundred pages, and they are using that whack right hand Israeli navigation scheme. Include statements don't work and it isn't database driven. I told them a month, and because of the amount of work I have I start sweating the moment the words come out of my mouth. 'Cause every time I make a time estimate I stick to it. Staying late is an option. Working weekends is an option. And I hate doing either. So I work fast and I work furious and try to make it out by 5, 6pm at the outside. But now I stare at the sea of red and know the time has come where I will fail - where I am forced to fail.
And then, a kind of redemption. The HR person calls me into her office. My boss on the line. I say the bare minimum 'cause I'm afraid of what will come out of my mouth. The HR person tells me what to expect and it's all a blur.
But something inside me is relieved. A space opens up inside and I know my struggles of late are done. Finished. They want me to stay a couple weeks and I agree. Shortimer that I am now I know this is easy money. I will "work" and give up the projects that are pressing and do what I want for the people that I want. I will train the new guy, my replacement, and watch as his eyes bulge in disbelief at the amount and rate of work that I go through. And I will reach out to my contacts - feelers stretching out like a disease, a healthy metastasizing bringing to me the ultimate job-contract-freelance gig. I will bag that severance package, that chunk of change that will keep me in candy bars and lollipops. Cash, cachingo, dinero. Use for famines, like this, but if I can make it rain I can bank it. That's both the challenge and the mystery. Am I up for it. Damn straight I am. I always knew I was my own man, even when I worked for the man. Every spare moment working the freelance-independent side gig. Sucking up the green. 'Cause that's what fuels me, my life. I don't worship it, but I know what it brings and I know the life without it, and I prefer the life withit. Manna-o-man I am in deep for it. And I take this as the push I need the bring that internal open space to the outside. bring my life to the conclusion I desire and the life I was, that everyone, is entitled to. I will grasp that which is mine. I will take it.
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