Posted by As I’ve mentioned, this is performance appraisal time at work and it has been a strange week. We are supposed to talk about goals for the next year but we all know there is a corporate sword poised over our heads prepared to come through and slice off a few people. And what’s the point of doing goals if you aren’t going to be around to see them through. “Business as usual” just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Could be that the last round was deep and cut away a lot of what we knew. There isn’t much left to be trimmed but the money gods demand that we find something. Nobody knows what things will look like on the other side but there is this general feeling that an end is near. And that is sad.
What is kind of funny is that several of the blogs I’ve randomly chosen to follow are younger people trying to find their way in the world. Same is true of some of the you tube channels I’ve been sort of drawn to. Guess it isn’t that funny given that it isn’t really my generation that’s doing a lot of this stuff. To me it is great that there are these outlets available for people and I wonder how my life would have turned out if I were just starting my career rather than probably ending it soon.
Would I want to go back there? No, I don’t think so. Maybe it is just some nostalgia because when you are starting something everything is kind of fresh and new and kind of exciting. My first apartment was fun. Buying furniture and feeling like a real adult. The best part of being young is that it is easier to back up and change directions when you come to a dead end. Time is on your side and correcting what seem like mistakes is more doable.
Now I find myself in a situation where there is a very real possibility that I’ll get called into a room and told I’m no longer needed. Here’s your package, sign the papers and turn in your badge. (They usually don’t make you leave that day so that’s an exaggeration) So what do I do next?
Trade one set of corporate rules and problems for another? I’m sure that I could dust off the resume and go find something else. I still must have some value to someone. But I’ve been lucky to work in a place where, despite the corporate stuff, I’ve found intrinsic value in what I do. Could that be repeated somewhere else? Don’t really know but I’m also a little burned out on the whole corporate thing.
In some ways, I feel like the guy in Office Space when asked what he’d do with a million dollars and his answer was that he’d do nothing. In theory, I have that option because we’ve planned and my wife makes enough for both of us to live on. But I think that would be boring. I’ve looked at a few options just to have things to do but I’m not much into planning so I haven’t gone beyond just some casual looking.
There is part of me that feels ready to go. The last year has drained me of a lot of my passion and I don’t want to get to the point of going in every day and trying to fake it. Having to let people go earlier was tough and I don’t want to have to do it again and that would surely be the case if I stay. The company is shifting gears and we primarily work on what would be considered the “legacy” stuff. It still needs to be managed but there won’t be a lot of new stuff so as stuff winds down, there will be fewer and fewer people needed so this cycle may continue for a bit.
I am trying to live be the motto that whatever happens will happen for a reason. Being released from one place allows you to start something new but just not sure that that new thing would be for me. So we just keep going on day by day waiting for the fun to start and until we all know whether we survive this round or whether we get kicked to the curb.
Facing Diagonal Wall 