Hammerfall 2.0: Unexpected Blessings

 One of the funny things about hiking out in the wilderness is that when you crest a peak or ridge a brief window of cell phone coverage presents itself and the build up of several text messages and phone messages sudden arrive (If you are aware of this, you can also use the opportunity to supply people with updates like "Hey, we are still alive").

Thus it was I found myself on Saturday evening when we were camping on snow a message from my coworker that my soon-to-be former employer had updated their accrued time off policy.  As of that day (12 May) no accrued time off would be paid  to any employee upon their departure.  Apparently the "Use it or lose it" policy was now a standard thing, not just a one time practice.

And yesterday, the company put out their Q1 financial statement and business report and noted at the bottom of the report that they were investigating "strategic options".  For those that may not be familiar, that is code for "sale or reverse merger", a sort of "Hail Mary" which usually precedes bankruptcy.

In other words, my "layoff" is now kind of a blessing.

It is a blessing in multiple ways. It clearly gave me the fact that I needed to investigate a new direction.  It allowed me to take my PTO (instead of now, where planning to draw down all my vacation would potential delay my start time at my new employer).  It spares me the challenges of working at a company which is is the process of dying - if you have never worked at one, it can be a very depressing environment:  people are now effectively incentivized to find a new job now and start just disappearing, there are no real projects going on but just the shut down of existing ones and hoping (vainly for the most part) for some sort of unexpected good news.

That does not really clear anything else up, of course.  I still do not have another full time position (second interview is today); on the bright side, I complete my training (on-line and in-person) at my part time job next week so at least I have something (not to underestimated in this economy, to be sure).  The job search has not improved in any real sense of the word:  rejections continue to trickle in and the positions I see listed are not, for the most part, things I can apply to with a serious sense that it will result in a position.

But it does strike me as ironic that this unexpected layoff has, in a way, prevented a far more stressful situation from manifesting in my life.

God remains in control.  It is just difficult to see sometimes when I am only looking at what has happened, not what is upcoming.