That's Life...

I’ve been burning up and spinning my wheels I guess it’s adding up after all these years There’s gotta be something more for me to find So I’m laying off the brake and leaning on the gas There ain’t no way I’m ever gonna go back I’m too far gone to ever turn around this time I got a whole lot of ground to cover So I’ll put one foot in front of the other Stand back and watch the sparks fly --Jessi Lynn, “Someday Soon” Isn’t it funny how life can kick you in the ass? Sometimes it comes when you’re already down and just delivers that sharp, hard jab right in the ribs. Sometimes it’s a sucker punch right in the gut when everything seems to be going swimmingly. And, um, then there’s an ass kick thrown in just to hold the metaphor. On the heels of Rogtober it seemed like a good idea to engage in a bit of self-assessment, reflect. Possibly bring the entire Loco to Stay Sane project to a close. But I was looking for that unifying concept that brings everything together. I was thinking of making some torturous connection between Local H’s Twelve Angry Months release show, which kind of started off the whole thing in earnest, and Rogtober. But that seemed kind of forced, even when you consider the fact that I think of Roger Clyne as the happy version of Scott Lucas and vice versa. I was thinking that maybe I could set up some weird and forced dichotomy between Her and the girl named Tawni I met at the High Noon show. I mean, they’re both preacher’s daughters, after all. But that was kind of dumb. There was always an option to find religion, but, really, who does that? So I guess there was only one way to close that circle and make this post a possibility. I went and lost my job. No, seriously. In all honesty, I wasn’t all that enamored with the idea of writing this post in the first place. I mean, I would have been perfectly content to not do it or possibly just write some reflections based on the principle that I honestly felt like it was a good time for a bit of self-assessment. I could have even come up with a halfway decent intro. It’s not like this is rocket surgery… So here I am. Exactly where I was a year and a half ago. Except not really. I’m not actually in any trouble. My boss left my team back in April in order to take a different position within the company. My boss’s boss took over day-to-day operations until we finally got a new boss about a month ago. Starting in May or June I had a lot of conversations with my boss’s boss about what I wanted to do beyond my current position. I’d assumed at the time that it was more about professional development and long-term planning, since I knew that my position had a limited shelf life. I didn’t want to do it forever, anyway, so I happily participated in discussions and flat-out said I’d be open to any number of things. I wasn’t expecting those conversations to bear fruit quite so soon, though. Maybe 2011. Not January of 2010. But here I am. Now, there’s a really good chance I’ll simply be offered a new position in the company. It’s pretty much policy when eliminating positions to place people in open positions. It’s just that no one is entirely sure at the moment whether or not there will be positions. However, the boss’s boss and the new boss have apparently been working pretty hard to figure out alternate options for keeping me (well, technically, us, since there are two positions being eliminated, but you only care about me, right?) around if things don’t go down quite right. Either way, that’s Plan A. Plan B involves me following my job as it leaves, since it shall alight in Dallas (um, basically, my job still needs to be done. But there are three companies involved in this. Two own the third and the two main companies have basically been competing with each other over some things, which doesn’t really make any sense in the grand scheme of things. So the entire point of this is to take those things which both companies do and consolidate the operations at the third company. Said third company has committed to making room for me. They’ll even pay for relocation. This would be far, far more attractive if it would allow me to move to not-Dallas. I have a very odd short list of places I’d move to without complaint: San Francisco, Kansas City, Madison, WI, San Diego, Denver, and Phoenix are pretty much it. I’d be willing to be talked in to Seattle, Nashville, Atlanta, Austin, St. Louis, Portland, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, and Philadelphia. There are about a dozen places in Europe I’d actively lobby to get transferred to. But, in general, Chicago is my home, Chicago has always been my home, and it would take a lot of convincing to get me to change my mind in the best of circumstances. Dallas does not count as the best of circumstances). I don’t want to move to Dallas. I mean, I really don’t want to move to Dallas. I really, really don’t want to move to Dallas. But that’s an option on the table. My worst-case scenario involves a really generous severance package and sticking around long enough to get my year-end bonus. As far as things go, that’s not a bad worst-case scenario. The only real problem is that my plans to pay down my debt build my resources for a rainy day really needed another six months to really get going. And I can just start a sentence with, “And in this economy…” and let you fill in the blanks your own damn self. Overall, though, I’m mostly just shocked. I simply was not expecting this to happen. I’m not particularly worried and I’m trying to figure out exactly what my Plans C, D, and E may be, since I’m not entirely sure there will be too many more times in my life I’ll be single, 28, and suddenly at a point where a whole vista of options is open before me and I don’t have to worry about much of anything. So I’d say I’m in a much better place than I was a year and a half ago. Today was a bit of a sucker punch and it’s almost impossible to take one of those well. But this time around I’m extremely confident about whatever is going to come next. It would be kind of nice to know what that is, though.