Gainfully Unemployed

So, Friday my boss calls me up and says "We're going to do this call a little differently today. I want you to go up to room xyz on the 8th floor and we'll include our friendly HR lady in this call."

I may be a lot of things, but stupid is not among them.

Thankfully, the HR lady turned out to be the one and only HR person who's ever really gone to bat for me. When I was recovering from my stroke back in 2006, the insurance company wouldn't accept "He can't walk, he can't talk clearly, he can't button a shirt or sign his name" as a disability. So she got creative and made something up that they WOULD accept: Depression.

(No, I really don't understand the insurance company's reasoning either, but thank god I had her on my side, and she was willing to go the extra mile to make sure I didn't spend the rest of my life living with my parents.)

Not that she was able to jump in and save my job, and not that I wanted that job anymore, but at least I got to do my "exit interview" with someone who knew me and who I trusted. HR people get dumped on all the time, and I think having someone she had to fire praise her and thank her was a bit surreal. But corporate America is that kind of place, surreal.

For the second time in my life, I got laid off at 11am and I had a therapy appointment at 4pm the same day. Since all my benefits vanished at the end of the day, the timing was great. My therapist said I seemed to be taking the layoff awfully well, even considering that my job was driving me crazy and was the most dysfunctional part of my life. I told him that I was a little surprised too, but instead of having mixed feelings like I thought I would, all I felt was a huge sense of relief. That, and "All I have to fall back on is my marriage now... and that's amazingly good!"

Daddy was pretty blue when I told him the news, and yesterday (Saturday) morning he was still pretty glum. But we went into San Francisco to work out at my favorite gym, and afterwards we did a little shopping at Stompers. And Mr. S. And Leather Etc. Let me tell you, retail therapy WORKS. I'm not sure if it was his finding the perfect leather jacket at half the price he expected to pay (it makes his shoulders look wide as a barn door, without looking like Alexis on Dynasty), or walking around in the sunlight, or what, but he was in a great mood by last night.

So, of course, I need to find a new job now. But I also have enough savings and severence that I don't have to panic, and maybe I can even find something that'll make use of my skills and help me feel like I did back in college. My last job made me feel like I was in a dentist's chair being asked, over and over, "Is it safe?"