Near the end (Layoff). Part I

  Yesterday, I interviewed for the permanent position that I have been working at for the last 9 months in a temporary capacity. Thought this would be a good time to do an overview of the journey that I have been through to this time.

I may be near the end of this part of the journey; a journey that started almost 2 years ago, when after 23 years of very dedicated service, I received the 60-day Warn notice from Boeing. I had no pre-warning that I understood. It was a shock to my system to say the least.

In ways, I was a by-product of the Great Recession, the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, this one brought on my greed in banking and finance communities just like that one.

More Learning

When in the OSR Masters program, I learned about Punctuated Equilibrium points.  These are points or milestones in a system where change becomes chaotic and it is no longer possible to predict what will emerge from a system.  At these points, small inputs can have enormous effects in the final outcomes. 

As a system passes through a punctuated equilibrium point,  the foundation of the system—the parts of the system that keep it stable and unchanging—are loosened.  In human systems, I believe this means that changes can be introduced that would normal seem impossible, but which can seemingly be accomplished with relative ease.

Think of people that have gone through near death experiences, some make whole scale changes in their lifestyles and never look back.  After having a Heart attack many people stop smoking after years and years of feeble attempts.  Other people don’t change at all.  They somehow have a belief that the way it was is the only way it can be and this belief informs their choices going forward.  Many people knowing that smoking will kill them, smoke through heart attacks and lung cancer up until the bitter end or until the explosive oxygen they are using to breath precludes them from smoking—else they blow themselves up.

It is almost like the normal laws of cause and effect don’t apply as we go through these punctuated points. 

Extension

After  being lulled by the security  of 20+ years at Boeing it is amazing how  much my expectations and fear levels have changed or maybe it just a change in my time horizons.  Today, I was informed that my 6 month position at UW has been extended to 10 months.

To me this is great news from a couple of perspectives.  The first is that I don’t have to focus on getting a new job until after the summer is over.  So I can continue to focus on the getting ready for the STP and I can get back to focusing on completing our remodel.  Over the last few months my increased focus on work and biking has translated into not making much progress on the remodel.

The second area for which this represents good news, is that they are recognizing my value for helping with what they are trying to accomplish.  I am enjoying what I am doing, and feel truly valued for what I am able to accomplish. 

I’m not sure that this will turn into a permanent position, but I think that the possibility is a step closer.    This is where I’m feeling my perspective is changing.  Getting a permanent position would be icing on the cake, but it isn’t as so all fired important as it was before.   Getting through the fall is enough for now.  Not having to look for a job is a great benefit.  Being able to do something that I’m enjoying and feel valued for is a great benefit.

I’m feeling better able to handle whatever happens.  I may need to go back on unemployment, be without work for a while, or go for work with a whole new company;  but I can handle it and it won’t be the end of the world.  In fact, I can thrive through this situation and come out better in end.  At Boeing, I fooled myself into thinking that I was in a secure situation when I wasn’t.  Being a little more secure would be nice, but  isn’t as important as I thought it was.

Day 276–Transition—Uptick

Maybe it is just wishful thinking, but it seems that starting last Thursday there was a noticeable uptick in job activity in the areas  I search.  The number of job requisitions I go through each day has increased and the number of jobs that see that turn out to be of interest for applying has seemed to go up.

At the same time, my personal job hunting activity has gone up.  This week I have four interviews and I have 4 possibilities for positions in the works.  Three are shorter term contracts that could lead to longer term employment and one is a full time position.  This is the most activity that I have seen since I was laid off.

Each of these four has come about in a different way.  One was from an interview from December.  I wasn’t chosen, but my resume was passed on to someone else.  One came from a recruiter seeing my LinkedIn profile and then contacting me directly.  One is from some personal networking I had done with friend.  And the last is from a  job requisition that I put in near the end of the year.

The timing for hiring at Boeing usually comes after budgets are finalized and released.  This seems to happen towards the mid or end of February.  The Pace of Boeing jobs has remain constant since moving lower for the holidays around the end of November.  I’m wondering if other big companies have this same sort of beginning of the year delays.  If they do, then the next few weeks could see even more improvement in the jobs market.

This has combined to improve my outlook on the situation.  It was hard for me to remain upbeat at the end of 2010.  But the sun is out today, and the outlook seems bright.  Bright, not just for finding a job, but for finding a a position where I can bring all of my talents to bear in helping organizations, teams, and individuals become more productive and to expand their boundaries or concepts of themselves.  This is what I love to do and I do this as a organizational change management consultant and by helping in with continuous process improvement.   With this uptick, I’m seeing more of these positions, and with that an uptick in my personal emotional situation is taking place.

I hope the sun keeps shining!

Day 262 - Transition - Taking Stock

It is the beginning of the year.  For many years I have spent January reflecting on what has happened in the last year and what, if anything needs to change in my goals and behaviors going forward.  It is a time of taking stock and deciding what to focus on in the coming year.

I can’t believe this transition phase in my career has lasted as long as it has.  I was easily prepared to last 6 months, figuring that I would be able to find something in that time.  Even as I was planning this, I was hearing that the average time to find a job was taking 8 months.  Now I’m moving past this mark and not feeling good about it.

In order to last 6 months or more I decided to set my priorities as the following:

Day 200–Transition–The Saga Continues

Image via Wikipedia

I can’t believe that this is day 200.  This journey continues with little or no end in site.  Today I learned that 13,000 people will lose extended unemployment benefits in just King County later this month.  That is a lot of people being affected and that is just one county in the state (though  most populous).

Over the last week and a half I got my hopes way up high and had them crashed to the ground.  A job I interviewed for, seemed like they were going to extend an offer, but in the end they did not.  I really thought this was going to be the one.  I was a fool. 

Today I had the privilege to  a keynote presenter at a local community college staff workshop.  It was nice to do some work in my field, something I that I really enjoy doing, as opposed to searching and filling out job requisitions.  I did an 1 1/2 hour session called Leading from the inside out.  This was a series of exercises designed to help people find the passions that they can use to drive their personal leadership.

Day 157- Transition - Feelings just below the surface

It is over 5 months now without work.  The Last severance check came today.  From this time on, our monthly expenses will be exceeding our monthly income unless we can make some big cuts.
This ending has caused quite a bit of anxiety, dread, and even fear to surface.  There has been fear and anxiety all through this experience, but the last couple weeks has seemed worse.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I had assumed that I would be hired by now.  That we would be set back some, but that we would be able to get up and get going fairly rapidly.  
As I have prepared myself for this interruption in my career, I have thought about the long term, about being unemployed for a long time.  And I have meet many people that have been out of work for well over a year as reminders not to forget this reality of our present times.   And with all of that, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I had held onto an anticipation that I would be hired by now.  That I would find that perfect job and begin again: a new company, a new position, a wealth of learning, a temporary side journey, a nuisance of sorts: but not an overwhelming obstacle.
It has been the clinging to this thought, that has caused my turmoil over the last few weeks.  The fear of losing this and entering an unknown territory.
Fear is a constricting emotion.  On the savannah, when the lions were hunting, this fear caused our attention to narrow.  We stopped being able to see the berries or grub worms that would make a great meal, and instead we would intently listen for any noise  and scan for any movement of a large cat.  This emotion would keep us alive.
Today the emotion is not always so useful.  My narrowing has meant frantic motion to find a job.  The narrowing has meant that I have forgone exercising and working on the remodel.  The house hasn’t been as well maintained.  Last week with my wife out of town, I didn’t take the time to prepare a weekly meal plan.  I’m sure this probably cost us extra in groceries.
Last week I went to the ProLango training sessions, (see  day 153).  These are good classes, and they are feeder classes for the paid set of course that accompany them.   One of the claims of the class is, “You need to get going.  There are several large companies, especially a huge software company in town that is planning to lay off thousands near Christmas.  You have to get hired before you have to compete with these also. “ 
Was it just a sales tactic?  Was it true?  In either case it played on that fear that I was feeling.  It increased the anxiety that I was feeling.  It made me consider whether I should I be signing up for the next classes. 
I think I need to do a few things to counter act this fear that I am feeling.  The first is to release what ever anticipation I was holding about how the future was supose to work.  This journey will take as long as it takes.  What I need to do is to make the next step and every step is the best that I can.  I have to work hard to find a new job, I have to do uncomfortable and unfamiliar things, and I have to learn new ways of being.  But I have been doing this since the start so this isn’t something new. 
I need to take a longer look and see what has been working and what needs to change since the start and use this as the basis for improving what I have been doing.  Not let fear or other emotions control what I am doing.
Months ago, I made some crude estimates about finances and I have used this rough estimate up to now.  It is time that this get a bit more detailed.  I need to get a fairly accurate plan of our finances for the next couple of years.  I’m hoping this doesn’t involve tons of work.  But this plan will help relieve some anxiety of the unknown.
And lastly, I need to look for the ways that keep my attention opened up.  Exercising and meditating are great at this.   I had cut down on exercising because I injured my foot, now it is time to get back to full speed.  Taking small periods of time to meditate would be beneficial in many different ways.   A third area that helps my open my attention is by spending time in nature.  This I can combine with the exercising to gain great benefit.

To often we underestimate how quickly our feelings are going to change because we underestimate our ability to change them. 

                                            
-- David Gilbert, Ph.D

Related articles by Zemanta

• Day 153 - Good Courses to Take (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• How the Brain Fears (bigthink.com)
• Day 120 - Transition - FEAR (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• How Do You Influence Yourself? (successful-blog.com)
• Deepak Chopra: Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety (Part 1) (huffingtonpost.com)

Day 124 transition – This officially sucks—mostly.

Well it has been a little over 6 months since this ordeal began, and about 4 months since being laid off.  Time to take stock and look at the macro level to see what has been happening.
Looking for work in the worse job market in decades is not fun.  In fact, it sucks.  It seems that things are getting better, (there seems to me to be more jobs to look at),  but the pace of job growth is dismally slow.  This combined with the number people out looking is making it very tough.  Also, I read an article today that companies are trying harder to make better employment decision in the first place, which translate into longer time to evaluate candidates up to twice as long to make decisions.

Unemployment 1890 to 2008

Unemployment Jan 2007 – Jan 2010

It is not just the unemployed that are looking.  I have friends at Boeing that have decided it is time to leave.  Several are beginning the process of building up their resumes and dipping their feet in the waters of job searching.  Protecting what they have, but giving up the dream of staying with Boeing.  My point is there are many employed people that are looking to change positions or companies and are actively out looking.
So far, I have had 78 job applications or interviews.  Accompanied by 61 rejections.  John Gottman the relationship expert says that in order to have healthy relationships you need to have a 5 to 1 ratio of positive interactions to negative interactions.  Unless somebody radically changes the job hunting process, I will never be able to build a healthy relationship with job hunting. 
My hope lies in the current 17 open job requisitions which have not responded, some date back to May.  Not saying that one of the local airplane manufactures is slow, but I have given up hope  that I will be getting a call these.  I dare them. I double Dare them.  Hell, I Double Dog Dare them to prove me wrong.
So how am I doing on the other things I was trying to accomplish.  I wanted to do more than just job hunt.  I had the following areas that I wanted to focus on:

• Find a Job (Priority 1)
• Be a great stay at home Dad
• Get healthy (lose weight and get in better shape)
• Remodel the house
• Define a non profit that I have been thinking about.

Finding a job.

  This progresses, but I feel like a failure here.  I keep bashing my head against the wall and hoping that it busts through soon.  This is a class the I feel I’m trying hard, but so far I don’t quite understand what the teacher is looking for.  I would say I get a C here.

Being a stay at home Dad.

I think I’m being more good than great.  I have been focusing on other areas and could keep the house cleaner.   It isn’t bad, just still trying to find the right mix of when things need to be cleaned and developing the self discipline to complete the task when it comes up. 
I believe that we are eating healthier and I pretty happy about that.  I use more whole grains and have tried to reduce the amount of corn syrup.  Also, the amount of fruit in our diet has gone up. 

Getting healthy.

Here it is a mixed bag.  I have done lousy in the exercise department over the last month because I injure my foot and have tried to let it heal.  It doesn’t seem to be getting much better.  So I may try building up my walking again.  I could also be lifting weights, but I have been bad about getting over there.  I hope to improve in this area significantly in September.
Image via WikipediaLosing weight I’m doing great, at least for me.  I’m not at the Biggest Loser level that you see on TV, but I’m afraid people’s addiction to quick changes is what holds many people back.  I am much more satisfied to slowly take it off and then work to keep it off.  Since the beginning of the year I lost over 15 lbs.  I still have a ways to go to get to my perfect weight, but I am starting to see and feel the difference.  My blood pressure has been trending down since the beginning of the year and if it keeps going the way that it is, I should be able to stop my medication before long. 
So over all, I give myself a B in this area.  A B that I am pretty happy with.  If I can get back at the exercise, then I will have an A in this area.

 

Remodeling the house.

This is going slowly but we are making progress and September promises to be a month of big changes here.  The master bath is being rebuilt this week and by next Friday we could be able to take showers in there (using a temporary shower curtain instead of a door that will have to be ordered.
In the basement the tear down is proceeding and hopefully by the end of next week will be complete.  We have the cabinets in for both bathrooms and the old bar area.  And we have the tub in to replace it.  We are waiting for the other shower to get operational before tearing into the main bath.
I am meeting with a Sheet Rocker tonight and will find out what he can do.  He has a regular job, so he will only be able to work nights and weekends.  I have seen his work and it is great.    I’m excited to get this going.
We are trying to figure out what we want for electrical, carpet, and other colors downstairs and in the main bath.  So we once again have samples laying around the house. 
In this area, I give us an B- with most of the grade coming in September. 

Defining a non-profit.

Here I have done great.  I have thought about this and decided that I idea that I had was not worth pursuing .  There are many institutions that are out their, adding another one isn’t of great value.  Many later on I will get back to this, but for now this is complete.   This turned out to be a Pass/Fail endeavor and I ended up with a Pass.
I titled this the officially sucks, mostly.  It has it good points.  I am in better health physically and mentally than I was in February when this all started.  I feel that I am closer to my kids, than I would have been if my job would have continued.  I feel that I am having more of an effect in their lives than if I was working over this whole summer.  Could I have done better, you bet you, but the progress I have made is good and I like that I have been given the chance to change my focus.  I feel less stressed, I think that is why the weight is coming off; I’m doing less stress related stuffing of my mouth out of boredom.
The hardest part with this all is in the inability to have enough structure to plan for the future.  Instead, every day is a work day, a day to do something related to looking for work.  Others things are thrown in as best I can.

Overall

My nervousness has gone up in the fourth month.  I can feel the end of my severance pay coming up.  The unemployment checks are a welcomed addition to our finances, but it is not enough to sustain us with one in college and another one headed that way.  We are comfortable, not at our wits end yet.  We are lucky to have all that we do, and I wish we had a little more stability that we could bank on.  I appreciate the chance to improve in others areas than just being a working stiff.
I pray for the many, many people that are worse off than we are. 
Today’s quote, I think as a society we have a lot of this that we must do.  I know I have to work hard at getting my heart in order:

To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
-- Confucius

Related articles by Zemanta

• Remodel Update - Forward progress (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Remodel - Some Forward Motion (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Marriage Math (psychologytoday.com)
• Joblessness in America: A stickier problem (economist.com)
• Day 81- Transition - Never give up (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)

Day 120 – Transition - FEAR

I try to attend the Lynnwood WorkSource networking group every Monday morning.  The last few have been especially good.  Today’s was presented by Dr. Elisabeth VanderWeil and she title the presentation: Fear: Use it or Be Used Up by It.   Her presentation was good and the conversation it generated in the group was excellent.  Part of the allure of the networking group is in being able to relate and network with people in the same boat and having the same feelings.
I thought I would share the notes that I took here since this is not just good for someone going through unemployment, but also pertains all facets of our daily lives.
People think of fear as a one size fits all.  Fear of spiders and fear of speed can seem like the same things.  But fear comes in all sorts of the shapes, sizes, degrees and types.  Fear is as complicated an emotion as Love is.

Flavors of Fear

Alarm	Dismay	Intimidation
Apprehension	Dread	Panic
Awe	Fright	Reverence
Anxiety	Horror	Timid
Concern	Terror	Veneration
Consternation	Hysteria	Worry
Creeps

Questions that help you define and work with fear:

	Where do you feel your fear?
How high is the Volume (Intensity)?		What is it telling You?
	How will  you (do you choose to) respond?

Range of responses:

FIGHT	FLIGHT	FREEZE
Overcome feared object	Flee feared object	Stop to assess feared object
FAKE	CARE	CONNECT
Change appearance or sound to drive away feared object	Address needs of feared object	Establish relationship with feared  object

Learning to be able to use the full range of responses and to be able to sit with fear a bit is important.
The full experience of fear includes the full range of responses.  to use fear to achieve your goals is the determine how feeling scared can be healthy, a gift, the door to creative solutions, and the ultimate alert system to draw your attention to what is truly important for you right now.
We listened to this song and then commented on the lyrics.

The Power of Fear
We all have fears and we all have power.  An exercise we did was to go around the room and give a place where we have power or gain power.

“Where there is fear, there’s power.  It also works backwards.  Where there’s power there is fear.  We’re afraid to look at power because one of the deepest prohibitions is that against seeing how power operates.”
- Starhawk

• How are you wielding your power?
• What is the source of the power influencing you right now?
• How much fear comes up when you “touch” that power?
• What level of risk are you willing to accept to achieve your goal?

To be afraid of something is proof positive that it hasn’t happened.
- Galvin deBecker

Know you power.  Know what brings you joy.  This is your life, the life that you are continuously creating.  Don’t compare yourself to others.  Comparison=Misery.

An exercise for working with fear:

Create the image of a fearful situation in your mind.  Be detailed.  You brain doesn’t know the difference between what is real and what is made up.   The fears that would arise in the real situation should arise in the simulation.  And then you can practice on your responses.

• Write down the image in detail
• Note how and where you are feeling fear.
• What experiences from the past might help you in this situation.  Bring them into the simulation.
• What new responses could you try out?

This is not a one time exercise, but rather a exercise you repeated practice so that you new responses come automatically.
Another tool is the center with you breath.

References:
A film that was mentioned as an example of how we create our reality: 

I Heart Huckabees 

Director: David O. Russell Cast: Jason Schwartzman , Isabelle Huppert , Dustin Hoffman , Lily Tomlin

DVD Discs : 2Special Edition / Wide Screen / Subtitled / Pan & Scan

• UPC: 24543169611
• Original Release Date: 2004
• Label: 20TH CENTURY FOX
• Sales Rank: 16,746
• Rating:

Books recommended during this talk:
 

The Gift of Fear

by Gavin De Becker , Gavin Becker

 

Feeling Good : The New Mood Therapy

by David Burns , Aaron Beck

 

Spark : The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

by John Ratey , Eric Hagerman

 

Your Money Or Your Life

by Russell Corben , Brian Smith

Elisabeth VanderWeil’s Blogspot : www.engagingfire.blogspot.com