A job well suited

As most of you should know by now, I am self-employed. This came about in late 2006 when the company I was working for at the time was "reorganizing"...and as we all know, that typically means layoff's. As I figured there would be a chance of that, happening to me, I decided to ramp up my efforts to advertise my own computer service company that I had been doing for years already, just not as much as I needed to in order to be successful with it being my only source of income to support my family.

So I made business cards, fliers, posted up "bandit signs" on the side of the road to try to drum up business. All the while, there was things happening at Siemens (where I was working at the time) that things were starting to change a lot faster. Knowing this, and knowing that my job was probably on the line at some point in the future, I had made my own plans to leave the company at the end of 2006, and work my own business full time. However, Siemens had other plans and laid me off at the end of September--a full three months sooner than I had expected. It wasn't the best for me, but at least I had expected it and things were already in motion to keep me afloat.

Now I say all that to say this: A few weeks ago, my beautiful wife and I went to dinner at The Olive Garden. There, we ran into one of my co-workers from my Siemens days. There it was almost three years later and we both still recognized each other and remembered each other's names. Anyway, I introduced Brian Johnson to Nicole and he introduced us to his wife. We stood there for a few minutes briefly catching up, but his face quickly changed to a distressed look when I asked about how things were going at Siemens and if certain people were still there.

He began explaining how since I had left, the company had let go of many people. He said how they actually had to train people from Bulgaria how to use and support the Xpressions voicemail system that I worked with, and how after several weeks of training them there, that they then had to go to Bulgaria and transition the support to there... so basically, they just trained their replacements. Brian continued saying how they had gone from a team of about 18 technicians down to six and how they were continuing to run on a very thin staff now.

So, despite the fact that originally I could have seen myself staying there for a lot longer, I ended up in a much better position working for myself. I mean, sure there have been some pretty stressful times, but at the same time, I have been much happier, I am spending significantly more time with my family, I'm able to do more things with them rather than just hearing about it after they went without me, I'm making more money than I ever have with any other job, except since the recession hit, it's dropped quite a bit, but I'm not complaining because I STILL HAVE A JOB THAT I CAN'T GET LET GO FROM!!! :-)

So all in all, it was all for the best. Sure it hurt at first. It was very scary being forced into something when I didn't know what to expect, or when it would all come crashing down on me. But looking back on it, I would never change any of it! I am glad I am where I am today!