Late April was springing and beautiful. I dedicated myself to finding another job, but not TOO fast -- after all, I did have some severance, and some savings, and it felt like a rare chance to enjoy spring.
But without taking any time off, I established a pattern that surprised me -- I got up early each day, far earlier than I had as an employee, and went to my desk with a cup of coffee and an enthusiastic spirit, eager to take on the project of finding work and managing my life until I had found one.
I took the concept very seriously -- right now, my job was to make sure that my bills were paid. I suddenly was much more interested in where my money went than I even was during my divorce at the worst of my "going to live in a box" paranoia. I had spreadsheets of all of my bills, and reconsidered everything. Cable was one of the first things to go. Interestingly enough, one of the things I *did* spend money on was my house -- I arranged to repair and cover the wood trim on the outside of my 1950's bungalo with vinyl, terrified that I wouldn't be able to pay for it, but also certain that it needed to be done and that somehow, I'd find a way to handle it.
For about 2 hours every morning, I searched job boards before the start of the regular business day. Monster, HotJobs, Dice, Washington Post job listings -- I searched them all, and gathered a list of all of the jobs that might be plausible. Then I went out into the day, taking my coffee and a magazine onto my back deck to enjoy the morning air, feeling that I'd accomplished a lot in the hours I would usually have spent dressing and commuting, and now, when my day would have just been starting, I was able to pick how I wanted to spend my time for most of the rest of the day.
After breakfast, I planned what I'd do for the day. I was able (and needed) to cook much more than I usually would have, and eating food made from actual! raw! ingredients! became part of my day. I bought a crockpot, and discovered that it's possible to make an amazingly good stew by just throwing a few raw things and some broth into a bowl and plugging it in. I also enjoyed doing other enhancements to my house, painting some rooms that were still the dingy off-white of my married days, and finally completing the task of cutting up the nasty beige carpet and hauling it, bit by bit, out to the curb.
At lunchtime, I did another round of work, often researching the companies where I'd found promising ads, revising my resume, and taking the opportunity to learn some new skills. I began playing with Web graphics, something I never did get good at.
In the afternoon, I made phonecalls to former colleagues, initially for suggestions on possible jobs, but after awhile, after they suggested consulting opportunities, I began to look around for people who needed a temporary technical writer or editor.
I picked up a short-term project, working for a woman I had myself hired (and been devastated to see laid off in an early round as our company imploded) a couple of years before, and enough money came in to pay the mortgage without biting into savings that month. A fencing buddy came through with a job writing a manual for a piece of software that paid another month, and gave me the flexibility and freedom to enjoy my summer.
Around 3:00, I knocked off, whether job searching or doing consulting work, and the end of the day often saw me hiking the trail around a nearby lake, or riding the bike I bought for myself shortly before all hell broke loose. A backpack held a notebook and pen, and I toyed with the idea for what I thought would be an interesting book. Parts of it still sit on my hard drive, overtaken by other events in my life, or perhaps just marinating.
What I found was that my early morning, noon, and late evening work hours allowed me to really enjoy what felt like expansive freedom, despite the fact that I was working as many hours as ever at my job. Being able to pick my time and plan my approach, though, gave me a whole new way of seeing things.
I did truly come to think of myself as a small business in this time. It was energizing, exciting -- I felt alive in a way that I hadn't experienced before. Completely alone, not tied to any other person in a significant way, I felt absolutely free to make my choices independently, and as long as the bills were paid, I was winning.
My family, however, was very concerned about my situation.
Next: Generational debate over the importance of the traditional job.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Story - Part 1: The Layoff
It was April of 2001 when the company I had worked for for nearly 4 years finally hit the dirt for the last time. Our small startup, fueled by the dot-com expansions of the late 1990s, imploded on itself one last time, this time taking me with it.
I'd seen it before more than once, and been part of preparing for it before more than once, so when I saw the tell-tale signs of a layoff without warning, I knew that this time, I was in it. My usual lunch companions (or at least, those who were left at this point) left sheepishly, after muttering excuses about having to go to lunch early. Those of us left in the office received an email to come to the conference room for a meeting. I walked out into the hallway and found other people who hadn't put 2 and 2 together yet.
"What are we doing?" they asked.
"We're getting fired!" I shouted with enthusiasm -- "C'mon!" I broke into a Wizard of Oz skip on the short walk to the conference room. They stared at me like I'd lost my mind.
We'd seen it coming for ages. Our company had missed our IPO by less than 24 hours with the sudden downturn of the NASDAQ the previous fall, and a series of emergency measures to save us, including being purchased by another company, simply hadn't gained traction. Some of us held onto hope that we could at least package up our product so that eventually it would be saved. And it didn't hurt that the job market in our sector after the NASDAQ "tank" was weak, to say the least.
At the meeting, we were told of our separation packages, the COBRA benefits available to us, and thanked for our dedication in such a troubled environment. Personal information was exchanged. We returned to our desks to find that our network access had been cut off, and we had each been assigned an escort while we packed our desks, got our personal files from our hard drives, and exited the building. I remember a feeling of exhilerated freedom during my walk to my car -- quite the opposite of what I'd expected to feel at such a moment. Others trudged to their cars, voiced concerns about finding another job, walked with stooped shoulders. All I could think was "it's a beautiful day, and I'm finally given permission to go be a part of it."
I took in a deep breath of clean spring air and decided to go for a walk when I got home. I thought about how I could cut some expenses; after all, I was fairly recently divorced and paying the full mortgage on a house I had not expected to own on my own when we bought it several years before. I did have six months of salary saved, somehow -- in the early days of my separation and divorce, when I joked to my divorce lawyer that I feared "turning into a bag lady or living in a cardboard box," I'd also begun to save money compulsively, to be sure I could protect myself in just this kind of situation. In fact, I'd taken to throwing my loose change into a salad bowl on my dining room table, so that I'd always know that I had enough money to call for a pizza if I really, really wanted to. When I finally cashed in that salad bowl of change several years later, there was nearly $400 in it.
Filled with optimism and relief, I went home, hatching plans in my head for how I'd manage my job search and what I would do next.
I'd seen it before more than once, and been part of preparing for it before more than once, so when I saw the tell-tale signs of a layoff without warning, I knew that this time, I was in it. My usual lunch companions (or at least, those who were left at this point) left sheepishly, after muttering excuses about having to go to lunch early. Those of us left in the office received an email to come to the conference room for a meeting. I walked out into the hallway and found other people who hadn't put 2 and 2 together yet.
"What are we doing?" they asked.
"We're getting fired!" I shouted with enthusiasm -- "C'mon!" I broke into a Wizard of Oz skip on the short walk to the conference room. They stared at me like I'd lost my mind.
We'd seen it coming for ages. Our company had missed our IPO by less than 24 hours with the sudden downturn of the NASDAQ the previous fall, and a series of emergency measures to save us, including being purchased by another company, simply hadn't gained traction. Some of us held onto hope that we could at least package up our product so that eventually it would be saved. And it didn't hurt that the job market in our sector after the NASDAQ "tank" was weak, to say the least.
At the meeting, we were told of our separation packages, the COBRA benefits available to us, and thanked for our dedication in such a troubled environment. Personal information was exchanged. We returned to our desks to find that our network access had been cut off, and we had each been assigned an escort while we packed our desks, got our personal files from our hard drives, and exited the building. I remember a feeling of exhilerated freedom during my walk to my car -- quite the opposite of what I'd expected to feel at such a moment. Others trudged to their cars, voiced concerns about finding another job, walked with stooped shoulders. All I could think was "it's a beautiful day, and I'm finally given permission to go be a part of it."
I took in a deep breath of clean spring air and decided to go for a walk when I got home. I thought about how I could cut some expenses; after all, I was fairly recently divorced and paying the full mortgage on a house I had not expected to own on my own when we bought it several years before. I did have six months of salary saved, somehow -- in the early days of my separation and divorce, when I joked to my divorce lawyer that I feared "turning into a bag lady or living in a cardboard box," I'd also begun to save money compulsively, to be sure I could protect myself in just this kind of situation. In fact, I'd taken to throwing my loose change into a salad bowl on my dining room table, so that I'd always know that I had enough money to call for a pizza if I really, really wanted to. When I finally cashed in that salad bowl of change several years later, there was nearly $400 in it.
Filled with optimism and relief, I went home, hatching plans in my head for how I'd manage my job search and what I would do next.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Mr. Universe as role model?
On the recommendation of my favorite coach Mike Litman, I picked up a copy of ARNOLD: THE EDUCATION OF A BODYBUILDER and began reading it last night. Expecting it to be fully an autobiography, I was rather surprised to find that half of it is diet and exercise instructions for bodybuilding, with the aim of "becoming huge," something I, a 43-year-old 5'7" woman with a 3-year-old child, don't plan to be doing any time soon.
However, I was really impressed by his instinctive understanding about how to motivate himself to achieve his goals. Learning at an early age that he was able to control some things about the world and himself but not others, he apparently innately understood how to capitalize on that, set goals, and never waiver, no matter how much negative feedback he received.
His focus on staying on the high road, too, was impressive. There's a long (for the book, the autobiographical portion of which is only perhaps 100 pages) story about moving to Munich to take over management of a gym, and the subsequent realization that the man who hired him and brought him there from Austria was intending to make him his lover. Although understanding that it would further his goals faster if he went along with it, Arnold also knew that he would get there with his pride and integrity intact without the assistance, and without sacrificing his values in the process.
He admits to his failings, too -- his use of women as sexual objects only, his tendency to aggressiveness to build up his self-image when he was not yet himself convinced of his own value. But one of my most important take-aways from this book is that each time he reached the realization of a weakness, whether emotional or moral or physical, he immediately took corrective action. His calves were not developed compared to the rest of his body? He brought them up to his standard. It was the obvious next step. And he extended this into other parts of his life, taking the same approach with his mental and emotional development.
The book was published in 1977, and the photos of the exercises show a Conan-era Arnold. I'm eager to find a Governator-era biography that shows how his fundamental understanding of how to achieve his goals has played out in his acting and political careers.
Much as with his approach to bodybuilding, where you bulk up to get the volume, and then refine to get the detail of muscle definition, I feel certain that the mental Arnold in this book is a bulked-up but not refined product. It would be most interesting to see how he refined his mind after 1977.
However, I was really impressed by his instinctive understanding about how to motivate himself to achieve his goals. Learning at an early age that he was able to control some things about the world and himself but not others, he apparently innately understood how to capitalize on that, set goals, and never waiver, no matter how much negative feedback he received.
His focus on staying on the high road, too, was impressive. There's a long (for the book, the autobiographical portion of which is only perhaps 100 pages) story about moving to Munich to take over management of a gym, and the subsequent realization that the man who hired him and brought him there from Austria was intending to make him his lover. Although understanding that it would further his goals faster if he went along with it, Arnold also knew that he would get there with his pride and integrity intact without the assistance, and without sacrificing his values in the process.
He admits to his failings, too -- his use of women as sexual objects only, his tendency to aggressiveness to build up his self-image when he was not yet himself convinced of his own value. But one of my most important take-aways from this book is that each time he reached the realization of a weakness, whether emotional or moral or physical, he immediately took corrective action. His calves were not developed compared to the rest of his body? He brought them up to his standard. It was the obvious next step. And he extended this into other parts of his life, taking the same approach with his mental and emotional development.
The book was published in 1977, and the photos of the exercises show a Conan-era Arnold. I'm eager to find a Governator-era biography that shows how his fundamental understanding of how to achieve his goals has played out in his acting and political careers.
Much as with his approach to bodybuilding, where you bulk up to get the volume, and then refine to get the detail of muscle definition, I feel certain that the mental Arnold in this book is a bulked-up but not refined product. It would be most interesting to see how he refined his mind after 1977.
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