I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on this my personal blog space. I start a pet project, then I drop it like a Tinder date. There have been times, though, when I circle back to doorways that I thought I would never darken again, and well, here I am back to my blog writing on Substack.
So, you may be asking dear reader, why now?
Part of the reason is that I’ve been told that the cushy gig I had working for the Feds might be coming to an end. Our Agency has fulfilled an extremely important court ordered mandate, clearing half a million cases off a clogged docket. Some of our claims were over seven years old. In four short years the backlog is gone. Just like that.
This week the e-mail from the big wigs in Washington to told us that it was (really) okay to take the voluntary buyout, or retire early. Unfortunately neither option works for me and I find myself having to wait for the RIF axe to fall on my main source of income. If I’m RIF’d, I’ll get a severance and unemployment and access to resources that would be unavailable to me if I were to voluntarily leave.
This time, though it will be different.
First of all, my position is covered by a Collective Bargaining Agreement, and that may get us a WARN notice so I may have some time between now and then to make the pilgrimage to the economic development workforce place on the other side of the Valley to take a LinkedIn workshop, etc.
Second my tenure with the Feds has been long enough that I am an official public servant, worthy of some preference in hiring elsewhere in the labyrinthian structure of the government. So, there’s that.
Third, since I am an older worker, job stability is never a guarantee and I’ve never taken my job for granted. I’ve kept my second job, and in my spare time I’ve developed a business plan, learned about SEO and the long tail, and signed up for a pitch contest for my own business. It’s a long shot, sure, but at least this time I have a plan.
While some of my peers are resting comfortably at home knitting baby booties for their grandkids, I’ve been learning SQL and Python and have become fairly fluent in Spanish and French during a recent stint working alongside the US Border Patrol near the US/Mexico frontier, running circles around my peers who are half my age. I’m not ready to hang up my lanyards that contain my employee ID cards just yet (and I have quite the collection of lanyards because I’ve had about eight jobs since my first layoff in 2013), and here I am yet again working on securing my next adventure.
Fourth, I am finally proud of the fact that I may very well be nudged out of the Agency. It’s the first time in my career where I am leaving an organization that was so successful in it’s mission that it accomplished it. This doesn’t happen in the government very often, and I’m glad I was part of an effort that actually solved a problem and made the appeal process so much easier for our appellants.
I, along with dozens of others worked myself out of a job, and I’m proud of that.
Yes, the times forced me to change in ways that I never anticipated at the beginning of my career way back when. For one thing, I no longer think about how I can make money. There are literally millions of ways of making money - some of them legal, some of them not. No; what is more important is the ability to add value to an organization, on one hand, and to other people who are part of your network, on the other. If you add enough value, the money comes without as much effort because you are actually doing something constructive, you know, making a difference.
There is also the importance of doing your best to maintain your composure when you are fired, let go, released, right-sized, shown the door, or even when you have to quit. I was forced out of the worst job of my entire career some years ago, but I made a point to thank my boss for the opportunity he gave me. The man signed my checks and paid my rent, so what if at the time he was a bastard and a horrible boss? You still say thank you and move on. Why? because it’s business. It’s not personal. I don’t care what anyone says, firing isn’t easy for anyone. You never know when it will be your turn to fire someone. So the more good karma you can earn during your departures, it actually increases your odds energetically of finding other work quickly.
And your sanguinity in leave-taking is rarely taken for granted. Though most severance agreements contain wordage of never working for ACME Widgets ever again, you still maintain a relationship. If that’s hard, hire an employment attorney and let HR talk to him/her. It shows your former employer that you mean business, and understand that you, too, what to avoid the messiness of emotion in a business situation, but are no pushover. Believe me, if you hire a good attorney you can save yourself a lot of headaches.
In this case, I may seek the assistance of my union steward, but hopefully, they will do the work that an attorney would in a private business scenario. My employment attorney just retired, and I’m in no mood to hire a new one right now. Also, I earned chump change working for the Feds, so I don’t have as much of a need to negotiate. I don’t have to worry about former clients as I did in my first layoff, or relocation expenses, as I did in my second layoff. Still, you never know. I may look at Arizona State University’s law school clinic just to be safe.
The other thing that has changed is that I no longer think of my day job as forming the core to my identity, because when people ask me what I do for a living, I blithely reply, “Oh, I’m an artist of possibility.”
It’s true. I am a possibility artist. Oh, and to give credit where credit is due, I got that moniker from Jeff Carreira over at the Mystery School. I’ve made it my own because I just don’t know what to call myself now-a-days, and that nifty little title seemed to work for me.
Yeah, I may be resigned to the situation, but don’t get me wrong. Economic dislocation is a horrible thing, and a true pain the ass, especially at my chronological age. Losing a job is right up there with death of a spouse and moving. It’s not for the faint of heart or inflexible in spirit. And the lack of money, yeah there’s that, too.
The second time I was dislocated, I had just relocated to Arizona. I was attending a bible study regularly at the time. I explained that I had been laid off. The head of the group looked at me and said, “I’ve never been without work. I’ve always been employed.” At the time, I was irritated with that statement, she seemed so smug and self-righteous. So much so, I left that church.
But now, I am reconsidering what she said, and this time I think I get what she was driving at. If you have something to contribute to this world you will never have nothing to do and therefore always working. Now-a-days I can say with a straight face and pass the smell test that this time will be different. As a matter of fact, I am never without work to do, either.
I am not getting laid off/RIF’d/rightsized out of a job.
No; I’m just changing my line of work, and transforming from your basic Federal minion and becoming a full time possibility artist, creating a life of love and work that is in true balance, aligns with my values and promotes the highest good.