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Survivor Guilt..

My job has changed quite a bit in the past 18 months. I was demoted from regional to area supervisor and had my workload cut along with a paycut. I didn’t mind. I saw the changes coming and made sure I was living in a place I could afford to live and in a community where I knew a lot of people if it all hit the fan. I felt no threat to my actual job at the time.


Over the next year the staff from store manager and up has been cut by 30%. The office has been cut by over half. The store staff have had a 10% staff cut. Obviously things aren’t the same today as they were then. I feel like I’m doing a good job and doing my best for the company as far as I know how to do. That being said, there were some good people out there who aren’t there any more. I should say in the interest of full disclosure, these staff cutbacks had absolutely nothing to do with the economy at large. The company was in trouble financially and an accountant bought us and was doing triage. Every decision he’d made I agreed with in theory. In actuality it’s hard to believe how many people lost their jobs here.

See the rest of the post here at simplerich.com

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
– Dr. Seuss
via T4D » Blog Archive » On the loose with Dr. Seuss !.

There is a whole page of Dr. Seuss quotes over there that I recommend any blogger have a look at. So much blogger fodder there I almost copied it in toto into evernote for later. You know… I think we can scratch the almost and change it to the past tense. I just copied the whole list into evernote for later use.

Today you are You… making sure you’re a you that you’re proud to be and that others are proud to know is what living right is all about. There’s a lot of rules out there, guidelines, and strictures that tell us how to live. There’s great gobs of writing telling us what we need to do to get it right. The guideline I live by is that I try and do things that I won’t regret later and wouldn’t mind if everybody knew about it. I try and treat all my employees and friends in a way that if someone says “Oh, we were just talking about you,” my response is to smile and thank them rather than wonder what they’ve gone and found out about me.

I can’t say I was always good at it, and there are some who still don’t like how I do things… when it comes time to let someone go at work, they don’t always agree right then that there was nothing else I could have done. Later though, they frequently agree with me with a sheepish look on their faces.
So while you’re out there being you today… be the best you that you can be because you’re the only you you’ve got.

Mirrored over here at home.

Personal brain dump

I'm going to wind up self-hosting my blog again.

I want 3 columns and modern screens are not 640x480 any more so why the hell won't blogger show me a template that is wider than six inches wide? I hate the narrowness of blogger blog posts. So I'm going to have to self-host, which means trying to figure out how to convince blogger to aim the name I registered through them at the new blog.

Fortunately for most people who read this blog you'll never notice. You're feed readers, and thank you for sticking with me through this dry spell. Here's the thing. I should go into what's going on or shouldn't I? That's a lot of my problem is self-censorship. I feel like I shouldn't get too personal, or that I should remain positive because of who may read the blog. I've considered a clean break with the whole old blog because of employers and potential employers and employees reading it. While mostly my employees are fine reading it... You know who you are. What if one reads more into things that I say than I actually mean?

These are uncertain times in the job market. I'm being extremely careful what I say so that it doesn't make any employees nervous, or endanger my own job or future jobs... that's making me very quiet to be honest. I've got a problem with that very quiet aspect. So... I think I'll get a self-hosted blog and quit being very quiet about things. I can't be the only person out there with concerns about their job can I? Seriously.

I recently got pretty active in Facebook and have had a lot of fun in there. Weird fun. People I haven't talked to since I graduated over 20 years ago I'm talking to now. Here's the thing... most of them probably had to look me up in the year book to even remember who I was. I made a point of not resorting to year books though. I was very much on the fringes in high school. If I had my druthers I'd be on the fringes now. I'm not an upfront kind of person socially. I wasn't then and I'm not now, although for different reason.

I went into the Navy intending to be behind the scenes sort of person, under the radar, finish comfortably in the top 10% but not high enough to attract attention. Day 1 I wound up in charge of making sure everybody was on the bus and accounted for on the stops on the way there and then had to get us in. CRAP! Then I wound up as Education Petty Officer in boot camp, in charge of helping ppl get up to speed enough to pass whatever tests they were having problems with. Fancy title for tutor. I know.

The whole staying just a little bit back didn't work out for crap. So I scrapped that idea before I was out of Nuke "A" School and haven't looked back. I don't go for back of the pack as much any more. I do socially, but not at work. At work I tend to be hell-bent for leather. When I get home I don't want to decide which movie we should go see. I'll follow at home. At work though... if you're not leading I'll walk on your heels, then your back, then your head. I'll push for as long as I can. I'll do everything I can to be the best follower I can be with a whole army of people behind me... but if you're in a leadership position in front of me... be prepared to lead because in the spirit of Miles Vorkosigan, I'm a huge believer in forward momentum.

If you haven't already clicked on my bitefight.org link feel free to click away. It's a web-based diversion that doesn't take up much time and plays out the eternal struggle of vampire vs. werewolf via html on your screen. No vampires were hurt in the playing of this game (well, I've been hurt a couple times, but if you join up you'll see what I mean and it's fun.)

In completely unrelated news, I finally beat someone to the punch. Wil Wheaton has finally come around and started using lulu.com to publish some stuff. I got there first! Neener Neener Neener! (OK, my lackluster sales book was out in 2004 and was a result of 2003's NaNoWriMo and is not the great american novel. But still... I'm sure he went there because I did.) I'm such a freaking trend-setter. If you're a fan of Wil's blog (Yeah, now that he's copying me, I can call him by his first name) go get this most recent publication of his. It's available in PDF for only five bucks. And it's a good intro into the rest of his stuff. (No future paragraphs will contain this many parenthetical comments.)

I'm back to listening to last.fm again. That's something that comes and goes for some reason.

Happy Valentine's Day!

burnt heart,
originally uploaded by Rich G..

Valentine's Day is a day for lovers in my mind. When I was little it was for boyfriends and girlfriends; husbands and wives. But, in school everybody had to give everybody a valentine, which is cool I guess. Otherwise I'd have never gotten one from the cute red-headed girl. (Yes, that's a Charlie Brown reference. It's also a reference to Melissa, my aching heart throb from 3rd grade and then 6th and 7th grade. She was dreaaamy. *sigh*. I also blame her for my fascination with Reba.)

Now it's been diluted to where it's a day for everybody who loves anybody... even friends and family. That to me is a little skeevy at times. I mean my room mate's mom is great and all, and I've known her for twenty years and we're super close... but we're NOT Valentine's day gift exchange close in my mind. *shudder* No offense Pam.

All that being said. In the spirit of the evolved season. I'd like to wish all of you who read this, some of you who are family members, a Happy Valentine's Day in a non-skeevy way. I mean it in the way I mean it every day. I hope you live well, love well, and have a really great day where those who love you treat you great and remind you how much they love you. There's no need for a day for that. I want all of you to have that happen to you every day! Oh, and I want it for me too. *grin* Spread it around.