Valya’s Blog

Lay offs are part of life, and a very common one of late. It has affected me in strange ways. At first, friends of mine were impacted. It was surreal and I wanted to help them, but I knew the workforce would be struggling for a while. When it was my turn, I had so much in terms of foreshadowing and forewarning that I had been wringing my hands for long enough to actually feel relieved when I finally knew the certainty. Then, the first reaction was guilt at that feeling. The second reaction, very strangely, has been complacency. Anecdotal this could be a blessing in disguise – giving the type of time one always wish they had to catch up on reading for fun, to research graduate school programs, to volunteer, to examine in-depth where to take the career track next. But that’s just anecdotal. After only a short while, one begins to feel restless, anxious to move on to the next productive phase of life and all of a sudden, even though one’s out of a job, the rat race feeling descends back almost mysteriously.

After a beautifully relaxing weekend, Monday morning started off with snow falling in such big rags the the wind was actually picking it up and raising it up before it sank lower than my third-floor window.

There are things that one does find time for that are useful – joining a massive social networking site that has been on the back burner for years and reconnecting with long-lost friends; actually catching up on for-fun reading; organizing the home abode, shifting furniture around, and resurrecting board games; re-energizing the gym membership with regular classes; cooking more; spending more quality time with family and friends, etc.

There is just one thing that appears to be on the back burner now – job and grad school research. Strange, isn’t it! And definitely very guilt-inducing. But for some reason, the most effort I have to put in is for this seemingly natural activity. I worry, most days, that I let the news cycle, Twitter, the blogosphere, overwhelm me with “there is no hope and there will not be hope for economic recovery for a long time to come” and find that it is futile to look. How sad that the deterrent is actually getting to me. Or perhaps it is an excuse? How awful would that be.