You know, it's odd. I'm blessed to have another job. I'm really REALLY happy about it and so relieved to be working again. The people I work with a so incredibly nice, and my new supervisors couldn't be nicer. I really like both of them a lot, and it feels as if I've known them for a lot longer than I actually have. I look forward to going to work each day and learning new things. But, still, every now and then, I feel a pang of sadness go through me. I'm still apparently grieving for my old job, and I just don't understand it.
Sometimes it happens when I'm driving home. I have to take the North Dallas Tollway part of the way home, and I just go with the flow. Or lack of it. Sometimes it happens when I'm watching TV with my family. It's unpredictable, and doesn't last long. I don't dwell on it, but you'd think that by now the grieving process for my old job would be a thing of the past. Apparently, not so.
I was there for quite a while, and I guess it just became part of my identity. Although I am a son, a brother, a husband and a father, my job was also part of how I defined myself. When I lost that job, I lost part of my self-definition of who I am. And even though it's only part of who I am, losing it was so much a part of my prior self image that not having it became at times simply gut-wrenching. For me, it was like a hole that couldn't be filled located somewhere below my sternum. I can't explain it any better than that.
In some ways, it reminds me of the grieving process I went through when my father died. I would be fine for a long time, and then his loss would hit me upside the head. It came and went, came and went, but never, even now, has gone away.
Still, the grieving process I've gone through after losing my old job is definitely getting better. Even though I still feel deep sadness about it even now, I expect that as the weeks and months roll by I will notice it less and less until it's gone. Totally gone.
That's what I hope for. It's time to move on.
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ReplyDeleteOoops...let's try this again...
DeleteI know exactly what you mean. One of the things that has helped me is I have lunch once a week with my old group (the "young" ones who still work there) and they tell me over and over again how it's not the same job...not the same company. Because of this I don't regret it as much, but I do mourn the place as it was. I also miss having a voice for American consumers. That was pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteNow I have this song in my head:
Another turning point
A fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist
directs you where to go.
So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.
It's not a question
But a lesson learned in time.
It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life...
So take the photographs
and still frames in your mind.
Hang them on a shelf
In good health and good times
Tattoos and memories
and dead skin on trial.
For what it's worth,
it was worth all the while.
It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
I don't know that I had the time of my life. There's got to be more to life, or a career, than that. It definitely became something unpredictable, and an unstable place to work. Not just during the on/off chaos of the past three years, but long before that--maybe dating back to when J&B came along. Maybe even before.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird now being on the outside looking in. My daughter told me today, "I'm happy you're not there anymore, Dad." What can I say? Although part of me is sad about not being there, part is relieved. While I worry about where it's going, I worry more about the friends we have who are there. I hope for their sake that the new regime succeeds.
I understand that there were more people let go last week. Looks like the "Layoffs on Legacy" are going to continue for a long time to come.
Awww, come on! Where else are you going to get to play a recurring security guard character on the big screen?
ReplyDelete