Hypography Science Forums: Pulling Up Roots - Hypography Science Forums

[Ongoing Unemployment Blog -- Updates at the end]

Imagine your frontier fore-fathers (and mothers), abandoning their comfy home in, say, Chicago or Philadelphia, and pruning down their possessions so they would fit in a Conestoga wagon or two. And leaving behind so much, so much, for the hope of another life at the other end of a long, barren trek through the empty Great Plains, and the desserts, and over the Rockies. Imagine their plight. Perhaps they were evicted from their home. Perhaps they lost their farm to the bank, and had no other choice but to pull up stakes and go West.

Only, it would have felt more like pulling up roots. Well, I'm suddenly faced with pulling up roots.

Today, I was laid off from my job at SAIC. Laid off. Lai doff... I got laid. Off. Laidoff. It doesn't seem to matter how I say it, it stills leaves me stunned. Pulling up roots. Feeling the deeper roots tear and snap. I haven't called Gwen with the news yet. Got to do that soon. She should be home by now. People here in the office are dropping by with condolences. Painful. Awkward.

I was told that "the customer is cutting back the budget on our contract." The customer is NASA JSC across the street. I am in the final days (hours) of publishing the definitive analysis of software risk for the Space Shuttle. As far as I know, nobody has ever calculated this before -- or had a clue how to do it. The document has already been declared a "baseline" approach for determining flight software risk for the next manned spaceflight project (whatever it turns out to be).

I'm really not looking forward to telling Gwen. She worries so much. And we are right damn freaking in the middle of arranging a mortgage for the new house we are building!!! She is NOT going to take this well.

Can you believe that I suck at networking? It's true, I do. I hate asking people for favors. I hate being needy. It feels like pan-handling on a street corner. Well... I guess that's all to say. I'm Laid off.

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Of course, that is NOT all to say by a long shot! I have this friend, Jayant (pronounced, "giant"), who not only was my boss seven years ago when I worked for another company, but he was also the Best Man at my wedding to Gwen! I called him up, sent him a resume, and suddenly two openings appeared at his current company that look like they were made for me. How about that?

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Update: August 15, 2010. Well, it has been about four weeks. No job yet. All my leads have petered out. No one at JSC is hiring. Hopefully, I can manage to get my first unemployment check this next week. I hope. Most of my days have become tedious and boring. Searching for jobs is so painfully dull that I cannot do more than one or two hours a day. I've been re-organizing my filing cabinet, cleaning up my computer room, taking books to sell at Half Priced Books, and washing a lot of dishes.

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Update: Sept. 5, 2010. About seven weeks now. No job yet. No interviews. The word is that nobody around JSC is seriously hiring until after they find out what Congress is going to do this month with the NASA budget. What projects are going to be reinstated? What contracts are going to be funded? Nobody knows yet, so nobody is hiring.

At least I finally got my unemployment "insurance" activated. Texas has gone almost entirely to online processing now. Every two weeks I go online and fill out a form asking how many searches did I make, how many interviews did I go to, how many jobs were offered to me. So about five weeks ago I was online and said zero interviews, 1 job offer, no--I did not accept it, reason: the job required extensive travel and living in motels which I cannot physically do. My unemployment was cancelled. SHRIEK!! It wasn't until four days ago that I finally got to explain to a person (?) that it wasn't an official job offer on paper (a contract), but rather a verbal conversation about a job which I had to decline for the given reasons. The WorkInTexas Commission had me call an 800 number to talk to a bureaucrat in California and explain the situation, and as of this past Friday, the committee decided to reinstate my unemployment benefits and deposited my first check in the bank. Needless to say, there is NOTHING in the unemployment website which explains this distinction. I thought I was just being honest, and almost got my benefits canceled.

Other than that, I guess everything is okay. I still shave every day and I am not demoralized. I am not demoralized. I am not demoralized. I am not...

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Update: November 15, 2010. It's been four MONTHS now. Today is my birthday: 64. Okay, I'm thinking about getting demoralized. I've had ONE (1) interview in all this time, with a commercial software company in a skyscraper near downtown Houston. I thought I did really well in the interview, and I was indeed very qualified for the job. A week later, I was told they hired someone asking for a lot less money. Oh well, the one hour commute each way would have killed me.

I finally had to make a decision about health insurance. As you many know, companies must now offer an extension of health benefits if they lay you off. It's called COBRA. The deadline for buying the extension was today. Last week, I mailed off a check for $1,500 to cover the last three months; and will pay $500 a month to keep my bennies going. My savings account is now down to $2,000; just enough to pay COBRA and mortgage for December. After that, I can tap my 401K, or my annuity, or "retire" and go for Social Security.

God damn, I suck at finding a job. Oh, when the jobs are available, I do great! They take one look at my resume, start wiping the drool from their mouths, and ask me how much I want! But when jobs are scarce, I'm a duck in a sandbox. I send resumes, I send email on LinkedIn, I make phone calls. Nothing happens. And nothing happens. And nothing happens.

I'm thinking about getting demoralized now. Just thinking, mind you. I haven't done it yet.