Life After Work

I wound up spending most of yesterday afternoon/evening in bed.  I’m just plain sick.  I woke up sick this morning too.  I’m going to try to rest today.

I’m now in week two of my hiatus from company #1 (my former company).  Hopefully, they’ll be ready for me to return on Monday, but if not, I have plenty to do for company #3.  I’m a bit behind with company #3 because I spent way too much time improving my self-employment accounting… and I’m still not finished.  I’m now going through Quickbooks for Dummies.  When Quickbooks is done, I should get to the task of setting up some new layout tools (and learning those tools) so I can start working for company #3.  I might also be able to use these tools for company #2.

Today, my wife is at home with me, taking a day off so she can “catch up” with work.  She’ll spend all day with her nose in her laptop (or sleeping), and I’ll spend all day in the home office.  We’ll see each other for lunch.

Day 85 mood:  Hoping to survive.

Well, after all those parties at my house over the weekend, I’m a bit wiped-out.  Actually, I might be sick – I sure am tired in any event!  We had two parties planned for this weekend, but we had so much food left over from party #2, that we had an impromptu party #3; a “come eat our leftover food” party!  I think we might have overextended ourselves a bit.

I did manage to meet with the staff at church this morning, and it was a fun and encouraging meeting.  My pharmacy and grocery visits afterwards were fast and efficient as well.  When I got home, I watched a movie.  I’d like to say that it was good, but… no.  Oh well, at least I rested a little.  It’s 2PM now, and I’m going to bed before the family gets home.

Day 85 mood:  Tired, queasy, ill.

Gee, I guess I’ve been busy – too busy to write.  What was to be a daily blog seems to have become a weekly blog.

Though I was “off” all this week, it was a busy week for me.  Last Saturday was tax day.  I did alright with that; I made money.  But it did highlight the fact that if I am to be self-employed, I need to get my accounting act together.  I don’t have as much information as I need on my mileage records (merely distance and destination), and there are a whole bunch of things I can write-off now… except that I need a receipt for everything, and I have very few receipts — I need a new and improved system!

And so, this week was all about updating records and improving systems.  I now have things in place, but it took a lot longer to do than I thought it would.  Here it is Friday and I haven’t done any of the environment setup for one of my (pro bono) contracts, and I should have been well into that by now.  I also have parties happening at my house tonight and tomorrow, and the house is not as prepared as I would like it to be.  By the end of the day, I’ll finally have all my old office boxes moved out to the garage – 82 days late!  With those boxes gone, my home office will again have counter space and will be fully functional – just in time for contracts #2 & #3, which will both be home-based.  I’m really looking forward to having a clean office!

Yesterday was also lunch with my former crew.  It was nice to see them and chat while slurping spicy Vietnamese soup on a cold and rainy day.  We spent the entire hour talking about our former boss.  And while I share the opinion that for the good of our former company, he should not manage, I’m not really up with all the negativity… even though I received an email from him yesterday about the “botched” work I did last week (see, I told you he would complain).  He also went on to say that I had been moving too slowly on the previous chip.  This has me a bit puzzled because I’m at home this week because I ran out of things to do – a week earlier than planned.  Anyway, I’m trying my best to forgive and move on, so this lunch sort of put a cloud over the rest of my day.  I left with some renewed anger, and now I’m wondering if I should go back and do part two of the contract if I am “too slow and mistake-prone” for him.

Should I not come back, chip #2 has zero chance of getting done on time.  Even if I do come back (which I likely will), management wants me to do the chip as part of a team effort (ie: training for them; “conforming” for me), and not on an individual basis, which is my preference.  By taking a team approach, the chip will take twice as long as me doing it by myself – the rest of the team will need to do a lot of rework until they learn how to do it right — the designer on this project is very picky.  Still, it has the benefit of training those who are there, and it will get the chip done months before they’d be able to complete it by themselves… and I’ll make a buck or two in the process.  I must admit, it sure felt good sending in that first invoice for the work done on the first chip.  It covered three months of living expenses – for only two week’s work!

Day 82 mood:  Actually, I’m feeling a bit torn right now.  I want to run from this contract, yet I still want to help.  I want to do something meaningful at home today – at least clean my house for tonight – yet I want to rest.  I know that the better thing to do right now is to avoid the “fear and laziness” side of any of my conundrums because doing so will lead to better, more positive outcomes, but hey, sometimes fear and laziness wins.  I’ll start by moving my office boxes right now and maybe I’ll gain some momentum – taking me through the day with purpose.

Last week was not great.  This week went much better.  I think after week one, everyone settled down and let me do my thing.  They came to realize that I am fast and competent, and that I can help them a lot.  The Senior VP even came by to personally thank me for coming back, and then he listened to me for around 20 minutes as I outlined what should be done on the next chip.  That never would have happened when I was employed here because he tends to be very hierarchical and would only communicate through the chain of command… which meant that I never heard anything, and could communicate less!  As a contractor, I no longer fit into the chain of command, so he can contact me directly.  I really like this new approach!

Having said that, I’m using the chain of command to keep my former boss away from me; I’m only talking to my replacement, who is my “handler,” and she’s talking to my former boss as an intermediary.  She knows, and my former boss knows, that I don’t want to talk to him right now.  And even though he insisted that I get a phone in the office and email so he could contact me directly, he has not.

Today ended on a bad note.  I’m all but done with chip #1, so they gave me a rush tapeout to perform… except that I had to be at another company in the afternoon so I was unable to finish the work.  My former boss will now grab the work over the weekend and realize that I haven’t finished.  Worse, I know that there are mistakes to correct on the chip.  I’m sure he won’t be interested in my side of the story (I was given 45 minutes to do a three hour project; I only just got started!), and he’ll make sure everyone knows that I screwed-up.  He likes to put people down in very public ways by airing every mistake for all to see, which is very un-cool.  I think this comes out of his need for perfection and control (mistakes will not be tolerated!).  Such people should never manage – their employees can never measure up; only get beaten down.

Day 75 mood:  Yeah, glad that week’s over.  I should get almost two weeks of rest while I wait for the next chip.  OK… that’s not entirely true – I’ve got stuff to do… like Taxes.

Well, my parents have come and gone.  I took them to the airport early this morning.  While they were here, we drove to F. McClintock’s in Pismo Beach to have some steaks.  They are without a doubt the best I’ve ever had – totally worth the 200 mile drive!  We then went to Hearst Castle.  It had been 40 years since my parents had been there.  It was a beautiful day and as always, Hearst Castle is a beautiful place.  The drive home on Highway 1 was too long, but also beautiful.  Next, we spent a day in San Francisco.  Nice day there too.  My parents borrowed my little yellow Porsche and went to see friends in Fresno.  It was cool to see these two “old folks” driving around in a sports car.  They loved it!

Alas, their visit with us was too short.  I’m sure they’ll be back, and we’ll see them this summer.

On the job front, things have certainly gone from famine to feast.  I guess I just can’t say no.  My tax gal never got back to me on whether or not it was advisable to do this, but I wound up taking all three contracts.  It appears that they will be sequential, so if all goes well, I’ll have constant work until mid-July.  One of the three companies is the one that can’t pay me, but you know what, I’m getting a warm feeling about them.  I hope this is God telling me that this is where I’ll wind up.  I’m also doing a small job for a company I’ve worked with in the past, and the biggest surprise is that my former company wants me to come in and save their schedule on two chips, and, I suspect, train my replacement.  I’m a little apprehensive about returning to the job that let me go, but they did take my “screw-you” pricing for this six week contract — I’m getting top dollar for this contract.  They know I’m worth it; I’ll get the chip done on time and with minimal effort.

I turned in the signed contract today.  I start on Monday.  Wish me luck.

Day 60 mood:  Apprehensive.

Today I picked my parents up from the airport (SFO).  They’ll be with us for the next week and a half.  I don’t expect I’ll be writing much for at least that long.

I don’t know if I mentioned this or not, but I now have three companies pursuing me; one of them being my former company.  They all want me to contract.  I’m not opposed to this, but I need to see if I should.

Day 51 mood:  Yeah!, great to see my parents again.

Day 50, Woo Hoo!  It’s also President’s Day (observed).

Traffic was exceedingly light when I went to pick up my friend at the airport this morning in my wife’s white minivan.  It should have been rush hour traffic, but it looked lighter than Sunday AM traffic.  I got there 30 minutes early as a result.

Traffic had more or less returned to normal by lunchtime when I drove out to Los Gatos to have lunch with a friend (good beer at the Los Gatos Brewery – thanks Mark!).

There were police everywhere today, and in the yellow car, I felt quite vulnerable.  Even though I was on my best behavior, I had a motorcycle cop follow me throughout Los Gatos until I got on to the freeway.  It was a bit unnerving.

My wife and kids are off this week, so this will not be a normal week for me.  As I was driving home, I saw my two children walking to a strip mall in search of food.  I ditched the yellow car and grabbed the blue car (two more seats) and picked them up.  We had a wonderful lunch together.

The evening was spent at a mission meeting.

Gee, I drove all three family cars today!

Day 50 mood:  I felt like I was on the road all day, but each “drive” had meaning.  It was an excellent day!

I probably should have let the email rest just one more day.  It was still a productive day, but I did not come close to finishing the Nehemiah study for Sunday.  I did get through the “meaty” part of the book though.  I have enough to teach.

Today I got some melancholy news – one of the two guys who were instrumental in getting rid of me at my job, the VP of Engineering, was himself let go today.  It’s hard to celebrate this because I really didn’t harbor much resentment towards him; though I did think that he was the wrong person for the job, and therefore probably shouldn’t have been in that position.  If I had any beef with him, it was because he played the role of protector for my immediate boss – who is an abusive manager – making it all but impossible for me or anyone else to go up the chain of command to complain about him. The VP and my boss have always been good friends, which is why my boss got the mid-level manager position over me when our two groups merged – by all rights he shouldn’t have.  This one decision also marked the beginning of the end for me at the company.  My boss spent an awful lot of time trying to beat me into submission.  I must admit that I spent a lot of time being passive-aggressive towards him in retaliation.

With the VP gone, my boss’s “rough” style of management should be exposed to all.  Those who have remained may finally get the chance to complain about him to someone who cares.  Truthfully, I can only hope that the Division VP is wise enough to recognize that my former boss should not be managing for the sake of the company.

It is sort of nice to know that the VP got fired because he and my former boss got rid of me without a proper succession plan.  They thought they had hired a replacement for me (after a year and a half of looking!), but failed to duplicate my skill-set, which is admittedly rare in our industry.  The chips got way behind schedule and the designers complained to the Division VP that the current layout crew was simply unable do the work properly (true).  They claimed that no one was capable of doing the work except me (not true, but I appreciate the compliment).  The Division VP did not want to hire me back as a consultant, but was forced to do so in order to get the schedules back on track.  Having to hire me back as a contractor turned out to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for the VP of Engineering I’m afraid.

Hey, if I don’t come on board to save the schedule, maybe my boss’s head will roll as well.

Day 47 mood:  Strangely sad that the VP is going, especially since it had been my hope – my prayer even – that this exact thing would happen.  I’ve been praying for a very long time that God would judge the VP and my former boss for all the wrong they did to me and my crew over the last year and a half.  We were not treated at all well, and I was let go for political reasons; not for anything I did or didn’t do.

What a difference a day makes!  I will admit that yesterday was stressful – my A.M. phone call went fine, but my P.M. meeting was painful!  Even so, I was highly productive during the day –finishing half of my Nehemiah Bible study — so the stresses didn’t get to me too bad.  To combat all the inefficiencies of the past few days, I did indeed turn off my cell phone and email.  They have been my main distracters.  I did make a few phone calls, and I did send a few emails, but I did so only during breaks.  My email was only open for a few minutes for the purpose of sending, not receiving, and my cell phone pretty much stayed in the charger after 9AM.  This worked-out great, so I may do the same tomorrow.  I still have another six to eight hours to go on Nehemiah.

And speaking of Nehemiah, I didn’t realize how much God would be speaking to me today as I did this study!  Nehemiah fits my current circumstances to a tee, and I am certainly learning a lot about how to be an effective leader through this reading; I’m learning how to handle “church business” properly.  I used what I had learned yesterday in my P.M. meeting and I think the meeting went better because of it.  I would have totally handled the P.M. meeting differently had I not read Nehemiah today.  Thanks God!

Day 46 mood:  Encouraged; ready to dive in and finish Nehemiah.  Actually, I feel ready to take on a lot of things.

This was a hard day for me.  The emails and phone calls continued (mostly phone calls), and most of these phone calls were stressful.  The church seems to be going into another round of spiritual attacks, and today I was being attacked as well.  It would seem that my many attempts to do things in a loving and Christian way were not perceived as loving nor Christian to others.  Bottom line: I had a lots of folks upset with me for various reasons.  This was a bit upsetting to me because I had no malicious intent in any of these circumstances.

I also have a couple of jobs that are pursuing me for contract work; one of them is my former company!

And so, for the second day in a row, my time was taken up by church and job happenings and I did not get to the one thing I needed to do this week – a Bible study on Nehemiah, which I am teaching this Sunday.  I think tomorrow needs to be a no phone, no email day.  This will be difficult because I already have two scheduled (and stressful) events happening tomorrow (a phone call and a meeting), and I should probably call another person as well, creating a third stressful situation.  I just want to be happy and to be left alone right now!

Hey, at least I had a nice breakfast with my friends, and my evening was spent watching a free movie preview.

Day 45 mood:  Sad and upset.  Tired and dejected.  My evening was spent with a simply massive headache, likely brought on by a combination of stress, allergies and because I didn’t have any coffee today.