How Long Do I Have to Climb The Side Of My Mountain
This will be week number two of making blog entries to this weblog. So before I establish a true pattern of updates, I will do another week. However, it is starting to shape up I will make updates on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings.
So outside the fact, I cannot stand this job, I am up in the middle of the night instead of sleeping with my wife where I ought to be, things are fair. The weekend was no different from any other weekend in suburbia, things to do, shopping to do, yard-work to do, etc… That is why I thought long and hard about starting a blog, WTF could I write about, since our lives right now are just infamously boring at the moment.
I did read my wife’s blog this evening which will allow for several segues between the two blogs. One was truly depressing, the other quite intriguing.
Driving into work today, I heard a tune from Coldplay, not sure exactly what the song is, and actually I could probably look it up since it did debut on the Billboard Top 100 at number eight, which is the highest debut of an English band since the Beatles. Now I know little to nothing about Coldplay besides that tidbit of information.
So I am driving in and this song comes on, it’s the second time I have heard it, which means the song is in rotation hyper-drive. I say this because I generally listen to talk radio or CDs in the car and will occasionally listen to music on the radio. The point is, I caught this one line of the lyrics, “How long do I have to climb the side of my mountain,” the context of which was perfectly fitting for my situation at the moment.
I read one of my wife’s blog entries tonight regarding our financial position. Not to get into gruesome detail or even to sound as if I am whining, yes bitching, but not whining, I feel as though I am free climbing the north side of Mount Everest. So last year, just about a year ago I am doing what I normally do, working my ass off trying to juggle multiple projects and make a better place in the company for which I worked over the previous six years.
My main objective was trying to get a new position pushed through via Six Sigma. The position should have been signed and requisitioned on March 1st. This is a position a number of my team and our management had been working on for two years. When I discovered no new positions were being approved including the one I had worked on getting approved, I should have seen the handwriting on the wall. But I did not. As a matter of fact, the Monday after I came back from a week of training and my badge did not work (since I was partially in charge of security, I did know that my card was reading, but the servo on my office door had blown) and I made a flippant comment to a co-worker producing an unusual look and body language, I should have known. I probably should have known what was in store for me when that same co-worker with a look of shock stammered and asked why I would ever suggest that I might have been out of a job. The comment I made to her was something like, “yeah, I was worried whether I had a job cause I came in with someone else and my card would not swipe on my office. I was quite relieved to find that I could get into the tech room and my office key still worked. You never know what could happen in a week, especially when one is out.”
I made the comment in complete jest but in hind-sight something very similar happened to one of our techs when all of his IDs were cut exactly a month before his actual termination date. Someone made a typo. So the tech calls in and asks WTF, the first level helpdesk tells him that he may want to talk to his supervisor because the records show he had been terminated.
So I look back and see just major fuck-ups on how big organizations do things including laying people off. To cap off this comedy of errors and Office Space like episode in my life, I decided to look for a new job when I found out my position was not approved and there was no real hope that it would be approved and thus no promotion coming to me. On the last day of March, March 31st, 2004, I get a call from a buddy of mine and a peer, who asks me, how I am doing. Not an unusual question, I just start out on how we are behind on a project so I am taking up the slack for one of my guys to help him and that I am planning an email upgrade roll-out, and how things are generally effed up. So my buddy, is a bit confused, and says… uh, you know I just got laid-off. I laughed my ass off, and told him he wished they would do that. He tells me no its true, I tell him to get the fuck outta here, and we go back and forth until he truly convinces me he got laid-off.
It took a lot of convincing because why would ANYONE throw out a resource like this guy. He had been around for many more years than I had, and he was one of the initial builders of the networks we managed at the time. So then he says, so they didn’t tell you yet? I told him no, if they in fact had laid him off, it would take a while to trickle down. So I am acting pretty dim at the moment. Why would I ever begin to think that the next thing from his mouth would ever happen. I was a principal architect and manager of the infrastructure at this company as well as a primary consultant for our clients. My buddy tells me, no not about me, about you, they are coming after you next. I was like, what? There is no way. They couldn’t, I was way too insulated and had the keys to way too many things for them to chuck me out like that.
A year later I am working third shift and making less now than I did before after paying for my own benefits, and many résumé’s later, a half dozen interviews later, my fingers are beginning to tire, my arms are aching and I feel as if any minute I am going to fall. I have to continue climbing up the side of the mountain. I know there is a summit, and I know it is above me, and I know I may not hit it anytime soon, but even a nicer base camp would help so I could regroup and get my shit back together. I need a breather as does my family.
So I continue climbing the side of my mountain in hopes I come to summit if to the grand peak.
So outside the fact, I cannot stand this job, I am up in the middle of the night instead of sleeping with my wife where I ought to be, things are fair. The weekend was no different from any other weekend in suburbia, things to do, shopping to do, yard-work to do, etc… That is why I thought long and hard about starting a blog, WTF could I write about, since our lives right now are just infamously boring at the moment.
I did read my wife’s blog this evening which will allow for several segues between the two blogs. One was truly depressing, the other quite intriguing.
Driving into work today, I heard a tune from Coldplay, not sure exactly what the song is, and actually I could probably look it up since it did debut on the Billboard Top 100 at number eight, which is the highest debut of an English band since the Beatles. Now I know little to nothing about Coldplay besides that tidbit of information.
So I am driving in and this song comes on, it’s the second time I have heard it, which means the song is in rotation hyper-drive. I say this because I generally listen to talk radio or CDs in the car and will occasionally listen to music on the radio. The point is, I caught this one line of the lyrics, “How long do I have to climb the side of my mountain,” the context of which was perfectly fitting for my situation at the moment.
I read one of my wife’s blog entries tonight regarding our financial position. Not to get into gruesome detail or even to sound as if I am whining, yes bitching, but not whining, I feel as though I am free climbing the north side of Mount Everest. So last year, just about a year ago I am doing what I normally do, working my ass off trying to juggle multiple projects and make a better place in the company for which I worked over the previous six years.
My main objective was trying to get a new position pushed through via Six Sigma. The position should have been signed and requisitioned on March 1st. This is a position a number of my team and our management had been working on for two years. When I discovered no new positions were being approved including the one I had worked on getting approved, I should have seen the handwriting on the wall. But I did not. As a matter of fact, the Monday after I came back from a week of training and my badge did not work (since I was partially in charge of security, I did know that my card was reading, but the servo on my office door had blown) and I made a flippant comment to a co-worker producing an unusual look and body language, I should have known. I probably should have known what was in store for me when that same co-worker with a look of shock stammered and asked why I would ever suggest that I might have been out of a job. The comment I made to her was something like, “yeah, I was worried whether I had a job cause I came in with someone else and my card would not swipe on my office. I was quite relieved to find that I could get into the tech room and my office key still worked. You never know what could happen in a week, especially when one is out.”
I made the comment in complete jest but in hind-sight something very similar happened to one of our techs when all of his IDs were cut exactly a month before his actual termination date. Someone made a typo. So the tech calls in and asks WTF, the first level helpdesk tells him that he may want to talk to his supervisor because the records show he had been terminated.
So I look back and see just major fuck-ups on how big organizations do things including laying people off. To cap off this comedy of errors and Office Space like episode in my life, I decided to look for a new job when I found out my position was not approved and there was no real hope that it would be approved and thus no promotion coming to me. On the last day of March, March 31st, 2004, I get a call from a buddy of mine and a peer, who asks me, how I am doing. Not an unusual question, I just start out on how we are behind on a project so I am taking up the slack for one of my guys to help him and that I am planning an email upgrade roll-out, and how things are generally effed up. So my buddy, is a bit confused, and says… uh, you know I just got laid-off. I laughed my ass off, and told him he wished they would do that. He tells me no its true, I tell him to get the fuck outta here, and we go back and forth until he truly convinces me he got laid-off.
It took a lot of convincing because why would ANYONE throw out a resource like this guy. He had been around for many more years than I had, and he was one of the initial builders of the networks we managed at the time. So then he says, so they didn’t tell you yet? I told him no, if they in fact had laid him off, it would take a while to trickle down. So I am acting pretty dim at the moment. Why would I ever begin to think that the next thing from his mouth would ever happen. I was a principal architect and manager of the infrastructure at this company as well as a primary consultant for our clients. My buddy tells me, no not about me, about you, they are coming after you next. I was like, what? There is no way. They couldn’t, I was way too insulated and had the keys to way too many things for them to chuck me out like that.
A year later I am working third shift and making less now than I did before after paying for my own benefits, and many résumé’s later, a half dozen interviews later, my fingers are beginning to tire, my arms are aching and I feel as if any minute I am going to fall. I have to continue climbing up the side of the mountain. I know there is a summit, and I know it is above me, and I know I may not hit it anytime soon, but even a nicer base camp would help so I could regroup and get my shit back together. I need a breather as does my family.
So I continue climbing the side of my mountain in hopes I come to summit if to the grand peak.
posted by Just Call Me Jay at 4:57 PM
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