Following Edge

Two Week Vacation

Originally uploaded by mooreamm

I decided to give myself 2 weeks off. "Off what? You're unemployed", you might ask. Well, I've been meeting a lot of people in "networking" to find my next employer and to help Anne Marie with her new practice, and working on the very beginnings of a medium sized project for the U of O. I'm keeping up this business work enough that it's encroaching on my expanded Summer fathering time and seasonal projects on the farm, etc. Encroaching! Enough that I decided to take a break until Lauren is back in school after Labor Day!

2 weeks of relaxation! Except for the day of work at the U tomorrow. And the handful of letters I've sent for job stuff. And the 3 meetings I had already kind of arranged. I'm just not that good at taking time off to vacation from the parade of projects!

Learning to give myself a vacation is a priority for me! Not like a european vacation. I mean a chance to set aside the concerns in front of me and really be here and enjoy the moment. I think I'll have to start small. Maybe a 3 hour vacation? Or a day? Maybe 15 minutes is a good start...

I'm being cynical, of course. My real goal is to be on permanent vacation, with not too much trouble on the farm, the family in good spirits, and interesting new work. I can enjoy every moment and achieve more if I get that "permanent vacation" feeling and bring it to my interests, my chores, my work, and other stops on the tour bus of life. I long shot, but...

I still have 10 days of "vacation" to try and get there!

I lost my job with CSNW a month ago today, after working for them for 20 years. Readers with a memory of two and a half years will understand that I was not surprised by being let go, since I started the process of hiring my own replacements quite a while ago, in the hopes that I could move to more programming and project management work. The process took almost two years longer than I expected, since the first replacement didn't work out. Now that a second new IT director is having greater success and I have finished training him and members of the new IT department, I was not at all surprised that they did not want to retain me for software architecture and project management. I'm excited to have a chance to move on to a new career with a company that understands investment in software and systems design.

Since I've been out of work, I've just been lounging around. HA! Actually, as both of you know (sorry, bad blog humor), I always have a zillion projects going. Between spending time with Lauren on her Summer vacation, helping Anne Marie with her new business, and beginning the process of networking with colleagues, friends and local software company contacts to choose my next work, I've felt busier than ever in unemployment. Truly, since this will probably be the only time between ages 16 and 60 that I am not employed, I have decided to slow things down now and experience a bit more pure relaxation before I embark on my new career sometime in the coming year. Towards that end, I spent 3 hours this morning tuning an autoharp and learning to play "Home on the Range". Totally frivolous!

The other pleasant side effect of being away from CSNW is that it will be much easier for me to resume blogging. In early 2006, the company asked me not to write about work-related thoughts, even though I had been very careful never to disclose anything sensitive. Especially in my last 2 years of employment, my work and my efforts to move the company and myself in a new direction have represented a lot of the contents of my mind. So, it was hard to write here without mentioning work, and posts have been very slim in the last two years. I am hoping that having a blank check to write about my cares now will make it much easier to write more. I wanted to wait a month to be sure that I had completed any consulting work with CSNW... now stand back and prepare to read!

There is so much more to say... how disappointing CSNW's method of terminating me was, how Lauren and I had the most wonderful repeat of the day sleeping we did two years ago, how we are making up 75% of my salary while I'm out of work, about my perfect scores in testing at the University, about camping, and so much more. Stay Tuned!