Emotional Detachment...Various

About jobs...

Slowly finding answers

During my career positions where I had to lay off employees or terminate them...I guess 'terminate' is a pretty bad word...all the work was the preparation to do it.  Typically the meeting was pretty scripted.  You describe what would happen, simply did not negotiate or engage and described what nice things you were doing as part of the 'exit package.'  Usually an HR person was present; my goal is to some day have the opportunity to fire an HR person.  HR people provide some standardization to the flow of people in and out of organizations.  Good CEOs and COOs ensure that HR people do not drive the organization to 'industry standards' in practices, compensation, benefits, etc., where 'standard' is unfortunately 'average.'


Having been gone two years it appears that I've gone through my grieving process.  I miss about five people (it used to be eight).  I don't miss the commute, the politics, the wasted time, the opposition, the esprit de corps.  I miss the money but that can be replaced in other income opportunities.  The same work can be elsewhere.  Solving problems for the owners to make money is being replaced with solving problems for me to make money.  If I re-read this paragraph it appears the logical conclusion is that I miss nothing.  That's good.  I did not miss anyone under my management once they were gone I guess the organization does not miss me, either. That's what I'd expect. 

Someone I know via a blog has taken a job to provide 'security' or money that was inconsistent in his private business.  That's understandable.  Right now I'm glad to be rid of the security.  One my co-workers, himself 'terminated' a year or two before I left once received advice from me to perhaps temper his comments and style.  His response was that he would never change, never compromise his self-directed style and integrity (his description was actually more colorful in a Navy slang sort of way).  In the two or three years I worked with him I came to the realization that I'd compromised my character and become corporate.  This guy was an architect so I'll pay tribute to his influence on me with architect Frank Gehry's photo.

Architect Frank Gehry

Back to termination...once someone was gone I did not think about them much.  Some provided value or intellectual diversity and those were a loss.  Strange as it may be I'm friends with a couple of people I terminated on Facebook.  That probably means something.

Car Connection...
My commuter car became terminal with 140,000 miles on the odometer.  A new F-150 was purchased.  No one seems to want to buy the 2004 F-150 with 14x,xxx miles on it.  Is its' death imminent?  In the last month a left rear axle seal has gone bad, the passenger door window motor has failed, it incurred $1500 in damage from flying concrete and now the seat has worn through.  It looks like a rodent-chewed hole.  It's an ass wear hole.  Now I'm driving a truck where small parts of the seat leave with you, adhering to your pants.  I put some duct tape on the hole, first black which looked bad, later replaced with grey (the basic duct tape color) which also stuck to my pants.  My truck appears to not want to leave.  This, too, might be a message.  The plan was to let the truck go and buy a $6-8k vehicle to drive around.  A clearer head would recognize that I have a $6-8k vehicle to drive around.  The F-150 is trying to tell me that.

F-150 Seat Hole

Politics...
Congress is no longer able to discuss, negotiate, compromise and move forward.  We're becoming a laughingstock.  Organizations (profit and non-profit) clean house when this happens.

Small business...
It's been very busy at the small business.  Fortunately nothing has broken lately.


Job Search...

The arrow points at two things.  The first is a set of double towers about five miles distant.  They replace a single tower fifty percent taller that fell during construction.  Seven workers came down with that collapse.  I think of them every time I drive by, each time I see a base jumper climbing, each winter day as the ice peels off.

In line with the towers is a raptor on a ventilation stack about a block away consuming a rabbit on the roof of a Subway shop.  

Height has it's disadvantages and advantages.

I have just a few more things to work through before becoming more job-aggressive/income-aggressive.