Today, I can finally reveal The Bad Thing.

I bet at least some of you already guessed it, huh?

I got fired today.

Technically, that's laid off, but, well... not an enormous amount of difference, really. I knew this was likely to happen as of a couple weeks ago (obviously), but was spending the whole time in unsure limboland going nuts, since I wasn't supposed to tell anyone this might happen yet. I don't know why, really, since I think things had been in the works a long time before I found out about it, and I don't think anything I could have done after that would have helped.

My position is being eliminated and she's got someone else to take over the new one she's creating for part of my job and throwing the rest of it around to everyone else to take over. She was very nice about it, I must say, and I'm not going to badmouth her for the world, she wrote me a nice recommendation, said she'd keep an ear out for anything if she heard about it, etc. And you do end up getting more money when you leave a job, so at least I can pay the rent.

Honestly, I went into the office all nervous, but after the inevitable occurred it was like "finally." Not hanging over my head any more like that, at least. I was amazing calm during the whole thing, you know?

She said I was free to go at any time, whatever I wanted to do. And don't get me wrong, I was temped to get the hell out (during lunch when the office was empty anyway), but I had one more story to finish up (reviewing holiday books), so I did that. Not the person who I did that for's fault, so I didn't need to slam her by flaking out. I'd also scheduled the photos for those stories to be done at 2 p.m., so I was stuck waiting around for that. I attempted to do one last page layout, but I just couldn't concentrate on the nitpickiness of it and decided "oh, screw trying to make this look nice", did a halfassed job and didn't even send it out to print. Didn't really matter. I'm guessing somebody'll panic when they figure out the page isn't done on Saturday.

I didn't say anything about this to anybody there. I faked being okay VERY WELL (and they say I can't act!) and cleaned out my various junk while they were all out at lunch. I sent one e-mail to the person who had this job before me (he'd told me earlier he guessed that she might want a more reporting position for this) saying he was right, and sent a group mail around to almost everyone saying so long, farewell, nice knowing ya, good bye. I sent it right before I shut off the computer, hugged the ex-boss goodbye and left. Let's face it, these things are awkward enough without having to tell everyone separately, everyone having to hide their reactions in the office, everyone not knowing what to say and standing around awkwardly ... generally in life I just don't tell people when I'm leaving for the last time, I just take off. At any rate, while I really liked everyone there, I somehow doubt I'll be seeing folks again after today. At least, I've certainly learned not to hope for that kind of thing, and there'd be the whole weirdness factor involved in socializing if we ever attempted it. Sigh.

The fellow I sat next to and hung out the most with at work had seen what was going on and followed me out for a bit to talk to me. He had guessed last week or so that something was wrong when he asked me how my review went and I said "Uh...." I was doing really okay telling him what went on until I got to the part about the e-mails, and I went verklempt, then cried. I can't believe I did that, blubbering ON THE STREET in front of people and everything. He handled it nicely, said he'd let me know about going out drinking tonight after he got off, etc. I don't think it's gonna happen because the roommate's playing around online, but it's a nice thought.

I then went home, broke out the Fuzzy Navel I had in the fridge and cried a bit before the roommate got home (don't want her to see that). She was nice about it, talking about jobs to look for and how she wants to quit hers because the 5:30 a.m. wakeup is just not doing well for her. Mom called and was very nice and supportive about things.They're going to come up tomorrow night and take me out to dinner and hopefully buy my groceries. Time to shamelessly mooch if at all possible, folks. I told Mom that for Christmas, she'd BETTER tell my jerky relatives to keep their mouths shut about my lack of job or boyfriend, and if that means they have nothing to talk to me about, so be it. My Aunt Susie might call to give me jobhunting advice (apparently she went through six months of hellish jobs after being canned after three months, or something), if she ever gets done chewing out the exchange student, who ticked her off by saying things weren't going well at home and they wanted to get rid of her. (Some bad soaps never change, do they?) I want to call the best friend, but given the phone bill thing -- I outright told Mom that SHE HAS TO CALL ME, I'm not calling her any more -- and the fact that she's calling me tomorrow about going to lunch Monday (extended lunch!) , I'll just tell her then. I sent e-mails out to my nice relatives on the East Coast and my few in-town, non-work friends announcing the news.

Oh, and I just got an e-mail from one of my former editors (not the one that fired me) saying it was great working with me, they're sad to see me go, keep in touch. What a sweetie. My eyes are tearing up.

On the one hand, loving the relief factor of this. While I loved working there and didn't want to get fired, there's a few bright sides to this:

Good Things About Being Laid Off:

(1) NO MORE SEVEN @#@#%!#% A.M.! My sleep has been screwed up mightily from that, and I am looking forward to actually getting some rest for a change and going where my body actually needs to go and staying up late if I darn well feel like it for a bit. I have been too tired all the time. 8 a.m. is a much more reasonable hour.

(2) No more hauling ass to the police station and back for 45 minutes most of the week! (Though I will miss the nice lady I used to wait with at the bus stop. Now she'll never know what happened to me- but then again, not a nice thing to have to tell about.)

(3) No more obituaries. Honestly, I tried to like them, I tried to not get weirded out by them, but it just wasn't working. They depress and disturb me and get on my nerves in many ways that I tried to ignore, but they kept on bugging me. Between the "passed away"/"gone on to meet his Maker"/"went to the Light" euphemisms, the loooooong lists of surviving great-grandchildren (honestly, this seems a bit excessive to me to go that far in naming each great-grandchild, especially when there are 14. Ditto nieces and nephews.), the people who wanted an obituary run on the exact day of the memorial service (for an afternoon paper, this isn't the swiftest move), etc., etc... this got tiring too. I could go on for ages on the perils of this, but I won't. Religion briefs had certain language problems too.

(4) I won't have to write any more Then and Nows (this series where they update an old story every week). I was going to have one due next week and I am so mondo bored of trying to think up things to cover for this. I didn't even START working on one in case I wasn't fired. Ditto the "Best Of Yolo County" every year.

(5) No more waiting for people to send in their columns when they're late or forgot again. No more spending hours and hours waiting for pages to print out on Friday afternoons. No more Quark doing funny weirdness to screw things up.

(6) No more sitting around wondering when the axe is going to fall.

(7) SLEEPING IN! I had to mention that again.

(8) Getting to websurf and chat all day long for awhile and physically relax. (Mentally, alas, this won't be happening.)

(9) I can go to my parents' house for Christmas for as long as I bloody well feel like it! I don't know what that'll be, but at least I can decorate the tree for one (final?) year and not have to leave to go back to work on Christmas Day like I was going to have to do.

On the other hand, there's now going to be the constant everlasting fear of will I EVER be able to find a job, hardly anyone I know looking for work in the past year has found one, they've all been out for MONTHS or in some cases years, I'm going to run out of savings and have to go move back home with the parents and then promptly kill myself because that will be my personal hell on earth ... I know I can't go out and spend money and have fun and go out to dinner and enjoy myself in any way now, and in some ways I'm kicking myself for spending money on stuff like the holiday review items and ordering big lunches this week for one last splurge. The lack of money thing is what's really going to wear on me, since it's been a few years since I couldn't afford to go have fun when I wanted to. (Probably better for me to skip a drinking binge tonight, huh?)

I am thinking that I'm going to keep out of journalism from now on-- at least, if I couldn't hack it here, I dunno if anyone else would want me, and the nearest other little newspaper I've heard tons of ugly stories about (my ex-boss was relieved when I said I had no intention of applying there). I'm thinking given the whole crappy economy thing, I'm just going to have to go for the absolute desperate peon total crap awful jobs, because beggers can't be choosers. Not even try to find something I'd like or not hate because I probably couldn't get it anyway (Mom keeps claiming I'll find better, but she doesn't have a clue what it's like). I should probably just call up the nearest fast food joint and beg for employment, even if fast food makes me want to vomit. It's not like I don't know what I'd like to do, but could I get it? Um, probably not. Those days went out with the dotcoms.

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