Some bring relief, others grief.
So, number one — my “job” at the four-letter. I went to Shmoocon after being told that things were okay through September. When I got back to work Tuesday, I was given my layoff notice. Winning!!1! Charlie Sheen-style! I’ve been digging hard looking for a new job all week, seemingly without success. Have I learned some lessons from my time there? Absolutely. Have I made some friends? Yes. Have I met several others I’ll never respect? That, too; I’ll try to avoid working with those folks ever again.
Number two, speaking of job-hunting, someone for whom I’d done a considerable amount of work without charge isn’t answering my E-mails these days. Noted with somewhat bittersweet interest. (I guess I pissed him off by pressing an issue a few months ago. I admit I was a bit jumpy, but there’s no words to express how much I didn’t like my situation at the four-letter company…. I’m not 25 anymore. I’m married. I have a chronic illness. The stakes are higher.)
Number three is on an unrelated topic. I’m very sad to see Shady Grove Marketplace closing up shop. It’s a tough time to be a resounding success in business for a variety of reasons, but I will miss Luke and Emily very much. I wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.
Number four: I’ve talked a bit with Dana about writing. Why do I do it? What purpose does it serve? My anonymous writing outlet for nearly fifteen years is shutting down permanently any day now after several months of serious malfunction. I’m sad to see it go, but it did kick me into writing again*, and everything gets deleted, eventually. I’d fallen away from writing a bit after I met my wife. I got back into it, seriously, after I found out that I was sick. There’s something cathartic about writing for me. I haven’t quite figured out what it is So now, I’m going to have to use different tools, but I was dedicated to doing that before I knew I’d be forced to.
*I’d been a pretty ardent journal-writer in junior high and high school. That all changed after one of my English teachers offered keeping a journal as an extra credit assignment. Two entries per week through the grading period, and an extra letter grade. I wrote nearly every day, largely about girls, being forcibly removed from my friends (I’d moved from Germany to Pennsylvania, didn’t have any romantic prospects, was sick with some unknown affliction, and was too slight to play football anymore), etc.. I was the only one in the class who took her up on the offer, so she read what I’d written with great interest. I’ll just say that she was worried about me. Seeing as how this was only a few months removed from Kurt Cobain’s suicide, the education establishment was really worried about dour dudes in flannel. My Godfather sent me an envelope full of floppy disks with this new thing called Linux, we moved to Virginia, and things improved for awhile.