A Brutal Day

This was the second day of layoff notifications. It hit closer to home and was even more brutal than yesterday.

The person in the cube adjacent to mine was let go. They're experiencing some personal challenges at the moment, so I feel for them even more than most. Two others I didn't work with as closely were also let go.

And, not only was my closest co-worker, who I work with on literally a daily basis and am also personal friends with, let go, but in her case, her last day is tomorrow. I understand why they did that, but it wasn't really necessary. It also means we have 8 hours to figure out all the stuff I might possibly need from her, and as of Monday, my workload doubles. I've been working 14-16 hour days and working on weekends for the last couple of months, so I'm honestly not quite sure how I'm going to fit more in.

I'm being told we're expected to "work harder".

I told R that we're going to spend time this weekend taking a very close look at our budget and "work harder" making cuts so we can boost our savings.

We have a decent savings account, and at the moment I don't plan to look elsewhere. My work is in an emerging niche, and I think there are still a lot of things I can learn in my job. With a few more years of experience, more opportunities may be open to me, and those opportunities may come with a nice salary boost.

So for now, I'm willing to stick it out. But R and I both have corporate jobs, and I don't want to be beholden to corporate America.

I want the option of being able to tell them where to shove it if they expect me to continue working ridiculous numbers of hours with no end in sight, then turn around, walk out the door, and not have to have a second's worth of stress about how we would survive indefinitely if need be.

On completely unrelated notes...

We ordered the pool fence yesterday. Assuming they're able to install it in the timeframe they say they are, our home study visit will be in 2.5 weeks.

I've scheduled our first LIT treatment for Dec. 11, but I'm still playing "should we, should we not?" with the idea of crossing the border.

I've been comfort eating for the past two days. Yesterday's dinner consisted of butter pecan ice cream with chocolate sauce. Today's dinner was garlic parmesan fries with a kicky paprika aioli, pepperoni pizza, and meatball pizza, topped off with more butter pecan ice cream, with an even more generous squeeze of the chocolate sauce bottle. Oh, and did I mention the bag of peanut M&M's I had while still at work?

Meanwhile, I've earned exactly $0 running dollars toward a massage so far.