Up In The Air

I saw 'Up in the Air' last night. It was sobering - seeing how my job became "unavailable" - that is how they told people the were laid off. "Your job has become unavailable". The phrase used in my situation, as I sat in my car after leaving a benefit fair for one of our companies, was, "I'm not going to beat around the bush, we've had a reorganization and your job has been impacted."

In the movie, the people doing the lay-offs were people who were hired by executives who were "too chicken-shit to do it themselves." So George Clooney said. In my situation a VP who had only been employed by our company for a few months gave me the word, and she did it right after she had been told that her position had been impacted (I learned later). Ouch.

The movie used interviews with people who had actually been laid off. Their responses after being told the news varied from shock, anger, sadness, betrayal, fear, suicidal, and one man cried. It is a cold business.

In the movie, one of the interventions used by the "fire-ers" was about the affected personnel having the opportunity to now live their dreams - to pursue whatever it was that they always wanted to do. To do what made them happy. I feel like I did that. I wanted to go to graduate school and become a counselor and help people. I wanted to work for a corporation rather than go into private practice. People told me those jobs were scarce and hardly ever available and very much sought after, and I would probably not be able to get one of those jobs. I knew that's what I wanted and that's what I aimed for, worked hard for, and accomplished.

That was then, and this is now.

Now I need to figure out what I really want to do from here.

But right now I need to spend some time looking at butterflies with one of my favorite people in the world - one my magnificently, darling, gifted, beautiful, and spectacular grand daughters.