(no subject)

This has been a less than optimal morning so far. My alarm clock did not ring and I woke up late. In a mild panic, I reached out to grab my fan.

Now, this is the first day this fan has been in my room. I got it from Moira's garage when I was visiting her on Friday evening. It's one of the sort that I love so much; vintage, solid metal hardware. Old enough to have an oiling hole in the motor shroud. Blades that I might have said would chop fingers off if you stick them into the ample gaps between the curved wires of the guard around them. Fortunately I was wrong about that, as I learned when I reached out, half-asleep and thinking only of getting to work as quickly as possible, to grab and move the thing.

I don't have very good luck with fans first thing in the morning. At least this encounter didn't require an ER trip. I'm pretty sure I don't have a broken bone; it just hurt a lot and bled some. At this point it's just an ache, though it's making typing interesting.

I couldn't find my laptop this morning. I'm just using the shared desktop our team has in the office instead. Good enough for today.

I have a meeting with one of my managers at ten this morning that I found out about when I got to work and checked my mail. That's on top of the review that is scheduled for two o' clock after I missed it on Friday morning. I have to admit, I have some level of worry that I won't have a job after today. I've felt that way for over a year now so I think a lot of it is paranoia. On the other hand, if I do end up jobless...well, I actually won't worry too much about that. I need to get out of here anyway, and I have a backup plan. I'd like to stay here and make money for a while, but not working for this company anymore would be far from the end of the world.

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Hey; by the way, does anybody know what kind of oil to use in vintage household appliances like my fan? I'd love to oil it, but I don't know what with!

(no subject)

I'm getting a hell of a lot of dancing lessons from God lately.

(no subject)

I was just talking to a coworker about why I like my vintage desk fan. Personal responsibility.

My vintage desk fan, with it's hard metal blades just waiting to sting someone thoughtless enough (like me) to stick them into it, is like a domesticated animal. Generally it's safe, but if you do something stupid around it, it could easily hurt you. In the hardware world, that possibility has been legislated as close to out of existence as possible. Fan guards with no room for fingertips.

And there's a hell of a lot to be said for that. Stoves that have safety systems that won't let gas run into a room and blow up are a good thing. Tickets for people who have children in cars without a car seat or seatbelts are a good thing. Safety from dangers that are not immediately obvious, or that you are put in by other people without your choice or understanding are not cool.

But it can be overdone. It's worst for animals. I believe that the vast majority of the time a human is hurt by an animal, the human did something stupid and is firmly at fault. an equally vast majority of the time, a similar majority of humans put the blame on an animal who is only reacting to stimulus in accordance with it's instincts. You can't legislate the construction and design of animals to make them safer, so animals are treated as though they're ticking time bombs, lying in wait for a chance to lash out at some unsuspecting human. It's that sort of reaction that leads to breed specific legislation against Pitbulls, or laws requiring people who are old enough to make their own decisions to wear motorcycle helmets. (In my opinion, we should all have the freedom to be as mind-numbingly stupid as we wish as long as we're not hurting anyone else, and motorcycle helmets are included in that category. Idiocy should not be legislated around.)

When I stick body parts into a spinning fan and end up with a cut and bloodied finger, it's my own damn fault and I accept that. On the whole, I would not trade my modern world with its modern conveniences and overly softened and padded corners for the difficult world of the past. But my desk fan is a link to a sense of personal responsibility that, it seems to me, was probably a lot more common fifty or a hundred years ago. That's one thing that I wish had followed us into the future. It seems like so much of the time these days, the first thing that someone who gets hurt wants to do is find someone else to blame for it.

(no subject)

Have you ever seen Up In the Air?

It's a movie about a man whose job is to travel around the country firing people. He's sort of an outsourced grim reaper of the HR world. It's a great examination of the freedom and isolation of an unconnected life and what it means to choose to give that up in return for being a deeper part of another person's life. It made me think a lot about my own life, and I'm still considering some of the ideas presented there.

But what brings the movie to mind now is the trainee who the main character is assigned to work with as she learns that there is a great deal more to telling someone that they've just lost their job than she has any inkling of. The resemblance to the HR woman who my manager got me on a conference call with so she could explain my severance package and other details had a bubbly voice that was kind of like hers.

Looks like I'll be with my current company up through January 14th, at which point I'm all done. My position has been eliminated as part of the upcoming merger.

I'm fairly ok with that. It's funny. I've been kind of preparing myself this weekend, as I have prior to reviews ever since the last merge, for getting downsized or fired or what-have-you. I was imagining what I'd do if it happened, and it was kind of a weight off my shoulders. I've been so stressed here for so long. I've felt incompetent through lack of training and support long enough that I started to feel like it was me. I really won't miss the place.

And I'm getting thirteen weeks of pay as severance. That plus the money I'm going to work hard at saving between now and then might just be enough of a seed to get started with school. It's not a phenomenal sum of money by any means, but it's something. Maybe even enough!

I'm not quite sure if I'm going to look for work immediately or not. As it happens, I'd talked to my parents just this past weekend about what I'd do if I was fired. My parents are both really busy people and I suggested possibly living there for a while, as I did when Moira and I were deciding about our living situation, and trading all of the household chores in return for rent. I could drive my dad around too, since he's visually impaired and doesn't drive and Mom has to use some of her time to take him around. "When can you get fired?" joked farm_cat. Well, now I have an answer for her! I could look for some part time work as I check into colleges, meet some entrance counselors, and look into grants and financial aid.

Or, I could start looking hard for more IT work. Either help desk again, or with any luck, some kind of entry level networking gig where I could finally put my CCNA to use. That doesn't sound all that appealing to be honest, but it's certainly an option.

What I am going to do though, is stay in my apartment in Chicago through the end of February. I know it's a terribly cold time of the year, but it will still give me a month and a half of living in Chicago without a job, free to explore the hell out of the windy city to my heart's content. Spring or Summer would have been better, I'll take what I can get and make it good!

I'm still going to New Orleans in November. In fact, I'm going to request another day so I have more time to explore.