Day Two – emotions appear

February 21, 2010

The beginning of day two began much more emotional than I would have figured. It was hard because I sent an email to my co-workers explaining what had happened on Friday.

I felt this was important for a few reasons. First, I care about them deeply and I wanted to bring them into the situation so that I wasn’t feeling quite so alone. I wanted to make sure that they understood, before they started seeing the changes that I will be making as irrational. I wanted to let them know that I will have to be breaking promises that I made to get stuff done. And I wanted to illicit their help going forward.

I don’t care about Boeing as much as I care about the people that I have come to consider as my friends over the years. I have worked with many excellent people. This is the greatest loss that this change will mean for me, a loss of friendships that have developed over a period of 22 years. I’m especially worried that my co-workers will experience survivor’s guilt and that would end up hurting them, so I would like to avoid that. While I will be focusing my attention primarily on getting a new job, I plan on remaining connected to the work group. And have even thought of pulling the group in to help me on a more substantial basis—thinking that this would both be a benefit for me and may help the group deal with the survivor’s part.

So far I have received two replies from my note. Each time has brought me to tears like sending out the note in the first place. I wonder as I send out notes to my more extended network of friends if the tears will continue. Today’s note to my co-workers was just a warm up to calling my son and brothers, will these calls be as emotional as my simple email note?

I have also reached out and connected with the three people that know have experienced layoffs in the last year. Two have provided some excellent references and firsthand knowledge. I hope that we can work to each other’s mutual benefit going forward. And after many months of dealing with this the bitterness they feel is just below the surface. I would like to get through this without allowing bitterness to change and hurt me.

I am proceeding on all fronts to develop my plan and thinking on how to use newer tools like google voice, gmail, and websites to get my message in front of people and to be able to respond as I transition and lose my connection to Boeing resources.