Thursday, December 02, 2004

Danger&Opportunity

Husband has had a contract with one company for a decade. Longer than most people with jobs in that company (or most other places for that matter) stay in said jobs. As with all such things, it has had its good points and its bad points. For at least two years now I have encouraged husband to sever the contract because frankly it is not what he wants to do and doing that keeps him from doing what he says he wants to do. We have reached a point where money is just not all that hugely important. It isn't like when we weren't in the house yet and we had to consider how we were going to pay for the roof, for example. There is plenty to do, and plenty to spend some money on, but it isn't money that will get it done. And if he does what he really wants to do, it frees the rest of us up, children included, to really do what we really want to do too. Family works that way: The better everybody does the better everybody does.

But it is tough for a provider to walk away from that which appears to be providence. So since he wouldn't be an honest man and quit, the company is shutting the plant down. The people he works with are primarily whoring themselves trying to stay on with the company in any capacity that they can. And husband ironically will be the last one out of the building -- unless he walks out on them first for lack of being able to take the huge multinational conglomerate death-throw stupidity.

But here's the real thing: People hear you are losing a job and think it is terrible. It is not. We have prepared for this for a long time. Looked forward to it. Relish it.

And although I'm an outsider looking in, it doesn't look to me like it is a particularly bad thing for a lot of other people either. Sure, for people who have committed all the money they are supposed to be making next month, it IS a hard transition. Worth far more than money, however, is the opportunity to get a different gestalt. See what else it out there. Expand the horizon. Shift the paradigm.

For us the different gestalt came first but even with that, I'm looking forward to what it will really be like because nothing is ever like you think it might be. We'll see how it goes.

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