It's
amazing how one phone call can change a season. I have been on
severance since late August, severance is supposed to sound better than
unemployed or laid off. I don't know about you but severance sounds
pretty scary to me, I prefer laid off but again that doesn't ring hot with
the singles in the area. Four months to read and hang out, four months
to do all those things I had put off because I was so busy working. I
have cleaned, sorted, organized, and cross referenced my apartment and car.
I have taken the teacher certification tests and managed to stay on top of
my bills and other obligations. The only problem with the arrangement
has been not knowing when I would start to work again.
All the months of watching movies and hanging out with the other
displaced techies has shown me a few things about work. First off, I
have noticed that people in movies don't really work or worry about money.
It gets in the way of the story, we want to see the lovers reunite or the
cars race through the office building. In real life it's hard to
concentrate on the "story" if you are not doing something to finance it.
Time is compressed and anxious. The second thing about work I've
learned is that it can be taken for granted. After a few years of
established routine work gets tired and old. I think I understand why
professors and teachers take sabbaticals. Real time away does put
things in perspective and re-energizes a person.
The phone call I received asked if I could start working
this week. A short 2 month contract doing technical document editing.
Not exactly a pulse pounding car chasing adventure but it is lucrative.
I drove out to Sacramento (110 miles) to be "Live Scanned" and photographed
since this is a government job. I was worried about this scanning
thing but it turned out to be painless. It is actually a new method of
finger printing which doesn't use ink. They scan your paw and
do a search while you stand there. I watched my prints roll through a
database until a match came up.
Uh oh! What did I forget? It turns
out my prints were on file from my Army days, this was ok. Now I'm
thinking why would someone who has prints in there for nefarious reasons let
themselves be scanned in a police station? I passed my scan and
barring an arrest this weekend I will be paying taxes again next week.
I have a nice weekend
to look forward to. In fact this will the first stress free, guilt
free, free to be me weekend I've had in a long time. The hours are
still the same and the days haven't changed but I have. I can relax
and enjoy the days safe in the knowledge that I will not be wasting time.
That's the killer, without work I have had a hard time totally letting go
because I feel like I should be doing something else, like finding work.
My friends and family have been very supportive and it seems they had no
doubt I wouldn't be on the bench for very long.
In other news I received my scores from the
CBEST (the test for school teachers in California) and the results were a
bit confusing. I like to fancy myself as well read and a writer of
modest terms. I hate math, in fact I only balance my check book to the
nearest 10 dollars. It saves time and I always round down so I never
bounce a check. I would much rather read than work an equation so to
find out that I scored in the top of the math section and only above average
in the writing exercise was troubling. I can only assume that the
writing section was graded subjectively and perhaps my topics didn't sit
well with the evaluators. "Students or Satan?" and "Why We Need Stupid
People" may have been a bit too much for the audience. Anywho I
did score above average and I am now ready to face the kids, again.
With my house, head and career back on track I am ready for the next
chapter. Stay with me it is only going to get more interesting.
--sean--
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It's
amazing how one phone call can change a season. I have been on
severance since late August, severance is supposed to sound better than
unemployed or laid off. I don't know about you but severance sounds
pretty scary to me, I prefer laid off but again that doesn't ring hot with
the singles in the area. Four months to read and hang out, four months
to do all those things I had put off because I was so busy working. I
have cleaned, sorted, organized, and cross referenced my apartment and car.
I have taken the teacher certification tests and managed to stay on top of
my bills and other obligations. The only problem with the arrangement
has been not knowing when I would start to work again.
I have a nice weekend
to look forward to. In fact this will the first stress free, guilt
free, free to be me weekend I've had in a long time. The hours are
still the same and the days haven't changed but I have. I can relax
and enjoy the days safe in the knowledge that I will not be wasting time.
That's the killer, without work I have had a hard time totally letting go
because I feel like I should be doing something else, like finding work.
My friends and family have been very supportive and it seems they had no
doubt I wouldn't be on the bench for very long.