Shit just got real...

Friday evening I received a phone call from a former co-worker telling me that my employer had closed the doors and that I was officially unemployed.  Since this was coming from a former co-worker (one I do trust by the way) I started calling around to see if anyone could give me more details.  No one returned my calls.  

So yesterday I'm watching some tv only to have my doorbell buzz.  Since I wasn't expecting anyone I inquired as to who it was...it was the UPS guy.  Inside my UPS package was a letter from my employer telling me that I have been moved to permanently laid off.  

Needless to say I was gutted.  Not really surprised that this happened but I think one has a tendency to hope against hope as it were.  I posted this same pic on my Facebook page as well with the caption that this is now how companies are letting their employees know that they are closing the doors.  

After reading the form letter a couple of times, I got angry.  VERY angry.  You see, I think this should have been handled VERY differently.  This was a company full of solid people who did great work, truly loved working with each other and passionately believed in the product we were making.  These people that stood with this company in some very dark hours deserved to be treated better than this...a form letter.  I'm angry that once the writing on the wall was very clear, that no one took the time to either have us all come in and break the news to us en masse or that we weren't deemed worthy of a phone call letting us know the situation.  What we got was a cold, impersonal form letter letting us know that we no longer had jobs and (here's the great part) that all of our benefits would end June 30th.  The very next day we get the letter our benefits ended.  Not even enough time really to get prescriptions renewed if we needed them or to see doctors for one final checkup.  Nope...in less then 24 hours from receipt of that letter, we had nothing.  

This company had a killer product...literally the only product like it on the market.  It should be raking in money hand over fist.  However, it didn't know how to treat people.   If you don't treat people well, there is no way that people are going to teat you well.  If you don't treat your employees like they are living, breathing human beings, worthy of some dignity and respect, then don't expect them to sing your praises to anyone.  Of course in this case, it doesn't matter, there isn't a company to sing praises about.

I will truly miss 95% of the people I worked with.  They were a class act, hardworking and just great people. It is my hope that they all find employment quickly and with jobs that treat them like the superstars they are.

As for the other 5%...well, karma is a bitch isn't it?

Today is a random day...

I'll be home alone today since Tim is going to be spending the day with my Bro.  So it's laundry and housecleaning for me.

It's days like these that make me prone to deep philosophical insights.  For those of you who don't know, I'm a witch.  I've had training in two traditions, one of which I am the co-founder of and I'm currently assisting some friends in their new coven as well.  I have a private student and boy is she amazing and one of the sweetest people on the planet.

For the most part I have surrounded myself with people who are kind and giving and accepting of myself and everyone else who stands outside of societal norms.  For example, I have a prison ministry.  I first started out in a prison that had mostly sex offenders.  Generally sex offenders are put in protective segregation because of the danger to them from other inmates.  There were so many in this facility that they WERE the general population.  It is never easy to love people like that and minister to them in a deep and meaningful way but somehow I managed to do that.  I always knew what my students were incarcerated for but when you are in a circle and that circle is formed in "Perfect Love and Perfect Trust" you learn to get over yourself pretty quick.  For me, it was not that I had perfect love and perfect trust in the inmates, but I did have perfect love and perfect trust in the Lord and Lady.  Only once in the 4 years that I was inside those walls was I ever disrespected by an inmate.  I asked him to leave and not come back until he apologized.  (He did 2 months later) But I never felt unsafe or intimidated by any of them and trust me some of those guys were SCARY!!  I miss each and every one of them too.  You wanna talk about perfect love? love the unloveables.

Many people in the LGBT community enjoy being in the Pagan community.  Many of them are deeply spiritual and have no place to go since so many of the mainstream religions have locked the doors on them.  I think that's kind of sad really.  I recently watched a tv show, Our America with Lisa Ling.  A great show that had the founder of Exodus apologizing to the folks that were harmed by his "pray the gay away ministry".  I think he was sincere in his apology.  You can always tell by the eyes you know.  And I actually kind of respect the man for doing that.  It has to be hard being part of a mainstream religion and being gay at the same time.  I never understood their hatred of gay people.  Their willingness to quote a few verses in the old testament while ignoring all the ones in the new testament, just kind of blows me away.  Their willingness to focus on the breakdown of the family unit but do nothing as people live on the street or shelters, have no medical care and every day children, the elderly, the mentally unsound are abused and taken advantage of...sometimes to death.  Somehow in their mind, gay people are the abomination.  It doesn't look that way from here.

With the end of DOMA and same sex marriage being re-instituted in California, its nice to see that the federal government understands the word "fair".  I always tell my students that Justice is about balance.  you always see Lady Justice with balanced scales.  Justice is ensuring that the damaged party is made whole...they can't be enriched but they must be made whole.  The defeat of those two measures did just that.  It brought a measure of justice to those same sex couples who had been denied what every heterosexual couple got...recognition and respect for their marriage.

The Daily Grind

Being laid off sucks.  I'm sure that many of you out there at some point have walked in that particular pair of shoes so you know what I'm talking about.

On top of submitting job applications, which arguably doesn't take to long since there aren't a whole lot of jobs out there...I watch tv or read.  Two of my favorite pastimes.  I've got quite the schedule going too.

10:00AM Perry Mason...I love Perry Mason.  If I ever need a lawyer, Perry is the gold standard.
11:00AM Jerry Springer.  I don't care what anyone says...when your life sucks, be grateful you aren't the person they have kept offstage in the soundproof room.  Your life is just about to go downhill FAST!
Noon Steve Wilkos.  If you have seen some of the early Jerry Springer tapings you will know who Steve is.  Steve is a former security dude that Jerry used for many years.  From time to time Jerry would let Steve do a segment and they were always amusing.  Steve's claim to fame is that he doesn't let people sit down on his stage if they have been accused of wrongdoing.  Oh, and he tells people to "get the hell off his stage".
1:00 PM Jerry Springer again...because is just one show a day enough? No. I think not.
3:00PM Jeremy Kyle.  I call this guy the British version of Jerry Springer.  I remember first seeing him on the telly on one of my trips to England and I thought he was a gasser then.

From there I might zip over to Netflix or Hulu to watch some old tv series like Mission Impossible or Dragnet.  Hulu has a bounty of samurai movies.  I'm a big fan of the Zatoichi series and just about everything done by Toshiro Mifune.  The other night I watched Seven Samurai that was directed by Akira Kirosawa and Toshiro was one of the actors.  Five years later you can watch The Magnificent Seven using the same premise...great art right there.

I also like to read.  Most of the time you can find me reading one of two genres...romances or spirituality books.  I do throw in the occasional employee development book so I can keep abreast of trends there.  I've read romances since I was a teenager.  Needless to say, I am sadly disappointed in the whole white knight image.  But who cares, I love to live in that world even if only for a moment or two.  I'm sure that I will talk more about my spirituality later but I do enjoy learning new things about myself, my faith and just how the universe works.

So there ya go...my current daily grind.  Please...someone put me back to work!!

New beginnings?

I lead a truly uneventful life.  For the most part, I like it that way.  No drama that is out of the ordinary for me.  I'm currently unemployed so that is a bit of a problem but its not something that is just happening to me.  I have few friends, even fewer that will call me up on the spur of the moment and say "let's do lunch" or some other spur of the moment thing.  Being unemployed can present a problem for that at this point since I like to at least pay my own way and money is too tight for that.

My life events are uneventful as well.  Married and divorced twice, one son who lives with me.  See...nothing to write home about those events either. 

I'm out there on two dating websites.  Neither of which has yielded any tangible results for anything beyond the occasional sexual partner.  At 49 years old, it appears that men in the 50-75 year old age bracket look at me as prime pickings.  No...not feeling the Viagra crowd just yet people.  And if there is an asshole within 100 miles of Allentown, he has probably contacted me as well.  Apparently, its not longer suitable to ask a woman out for a cup of coffee just to meet them.  Someone neglected to tell me that the new fad was to just give people your address so they can come over and have sex with you.  Forget all that meeting first stuff, you need not determine if someone is an asshole or has poor personal hygiene...you just give them your address for sex.  Yeah...not feeling THAT either.

So here I am.  In my uneventful life.  I work when I am able, I help teach on Wednesdays evenings and from time to time I actually run errands like to the grocery store.  Or maybe sew or do some needlepoint.  I attend the occasional soccer game with my brother and have a blast doing that.  But other than that, I'm a pretty uneventful person.

So I decided to start a blog about what is arguably a pretty boring subject...my life.  You will find the occasional rant, the occasional deep thought but in the end it will probably just be a very uneventful blog too.