samba, sun, and feng shui

I'm sitting here in the kitchen with Stan Getz playing and the A/C going strong. I'm putting together a dish for tonight's movie potluck at Jean's house — we're going to watch Venus. Tomorrow I'm headed to Virginia with my boyfriend for a visit with his family. The trip is kind of last minute, and a happy reflection on the fact that I no longer need to sacrifice half of my accrued vacation hours for a spontaneous little road trip.

Yesterday was my last day of work at the Very Large Multinational Corporation, and I'm very glad to have that chapter behind me. Four of us on my team were leaving our jobs on the same day, the results of the restructuring process. We all went out to lunch, told some funny work stories, and turned in our badges to HR. I don't think any of us wrung our hands or shed any tears yesterday.

The photo above depicts my desk at the VLMC. My office was in a dark little cave, a room with bad ventilation and not much natural light. I'm glad to leave that space behind and to spend more time in my tiny little apartment, which I have always loved.

I've been unemployed for 24 hours! No regrets so far.

Okay, there is one final mystery lingering in my mind about the VLMC, and then I'll stop talking about it, I swear:

My co-worker Wendy had been with the Corporation for 8 years. She started her career as a Level 2 associate, then worked up to Level 3 Manager, and then, in February, was promoted to Level 4 Director. Wendy was terrific in this role, and was getting lots of kudos from her supervisors. She was a great employee because she knew how to play the game and speak the language of the Corporation convincingly. At the same time, she remained a real person, and not some sort of corporate robot who spoke only in acronyms. She enjoyed her work and brought real credibility to her role.

Anyhow, as she was going through the restructuring process with the rest of us, Wendy was told that she was going to be demoted from Level 4 back to Level 3. Then she was told that the VLMC was going to hire a new Level 4 Director, and that Wendy would be reporting to that person in the future.

Why would this happen? This news just stunned me. I must emphasize that Wendy was the perfect fit for her role at Level 4. She was incredibly smart, accomplished, and energetic. Does this just mean that someone at Level 5 had it in for her?

At any rate, the issue is moot. Wendy told the VLMC to go jump in a lake (I am paraphrasing a bit). She was one of the four employees who left the Corporation yesterday. When I heard that she was resigning, I went to her and threw my arms around her in a terribly unprofessional bear hug, because it was so nice to know that the bad guys were not going to get her. As of yesterday, Wendy had already interviewed a couple of times with a terrific company and was well on her way to a better job.

It feels funny to be in this place right now. At the kitchen table, with a Stan Getz samba coming through the speakers, fresh laundry tumbling in the dryer down the hall. I'm an unemployed, divorced 33-year-old woman with a big swirl of ideas in my head, a handful of half-baked ambitions and no real clout in the job market. Yet I couldn't be happier with my choices and where I am.

I have already started looking for other work — I don't intend to just be a hippie for the next ten years. But I feel enormously satisfied with the places my decisions have taken me. I plan to take the next few weeks off to soak in that feeling, swim around in it for a while. I ordered a copy of the book Sacred Space. Feng shui is kind of corny and passé these days, I suppose, but I still love the concept. When the book arrives I'm going to do some space-clearing rituals here at home, reset the energy for the next passage of life.

These small moments seem to be my happiest ones. Singing, loafing, cooking, cleaning up, sweeping, reading, shooting photos. None of them are mountaintop moments. But those are the moments when I experience a profound peace with who I am and who I am becoming.

Sayonara to the Money Factory

Well, it looks like my tenure at the Money Factory (also known as the Very Large Multinational Corporation or "VLMC") will be drawing to a tortured close at the end of the month. I've had eighteen months of blissful stability, plenty of money, amazing health benefits, meaningless work projects, an endlessly agitated bullshit sensor, and the knowledge that the gig wouldn't, shouldn't and couldn't last.

The decision to leave became much clearer and easier for me last week when the VLMC let go one of my good work friends in part of a massive re-organization. Before Andy was let go, I didn't fully realize that he was sort of a lifeline to me in the office. Without him around, work quickly shifted from tolerable to fairly unbearable.

The silver lining in this situation is that I am timing my exit during the same re-org that swept Andy out the door. Most of the people left behind in my department are getting "re-matched" to a new position, but since I'm choosing not to accept the new position, I'll get a nice severance package that will help keep me going through the summer. It will also help me pay off the new Canon D20 and the fantastic new lens I just bought. (I can't figure out if the timing of that major new camera purchase is amazingly terrible, or eerily good. I'm choosing to believe the latter. Now I'll have time to enjoy using the darned thing.)

After my last day of work, I'll burn some work materials in Lalah's fire pit. I plan to make a little ritual out of it. Seems like an appropriate use for those 250 business cards I never distributed. I hope to never see my name printed next to that company's logo again.

I am really not sure what comes after this, but I feel very positive about closing the books on this chapter. The lesson I learned at the VLMC is that it's not enough to just make good money and benefits. There must be something more. Some little seed that opens up new possibilities. Some opportunity for growth, or even some interesting relationship with a co-worker that provides a beam of light in the middle of the day. I'll probably never have an Amazingly Meaningful Job, the kind of job where I save babies from burning buildings or distribute protease inhibitors to AIDS-infected Africans, but I need to do more with myself than clock in every day to a job that leaves me half asleep. I suddenly find myself reminded of the words of Jesus, when he talked about how worthless it was to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. As far as I know, Jesus never worked a day in an office, but clearly he understood how crappy it feels when part of you goes dead inside, and how much better off you are when you fight back against that death. And this thought is oddly comforting.