Welcome to the Land of Unemployment

Today was my first full day as an unemployed man.

Yup, some things have happened since last I blogged.

In early November, I hosted and delivered a training program for 15 customers at SGS. The program went off without a hitch (travel delays notwithstanding) and got rave reviews from the participants. "Tim is an ideal spokesman for SGS Tool," one participant wrote on his evaluation. Follow-up e-mails from several others favorably cited my performance as chauffeur, instructor, organizer and event planner.

I followed that by driving to New York to attend a "meet and greet" held by one of our customers. After spending a couple of days meeting the salesmen from all their branches and passing out my business cards, an e-mail from my boss had me driving back to Akron in a blizzard. Top speed through PA: 20 MPH, driving Interstate 90 single-file, staying in the tire tracks of the car ahead of me.

And what did I get for that white-knuckled, hair-raising experience? Laid off from my job of twenty years. SGS has a mass workforce reduction, laying off 73 people or about 25% of their total employment. Twenty years of dedication, gone with the stroke of a pen. I asked for and was given the three days before Thanksgiving to wrap up the projects I had pending.

Monday the 24th was my birthday. Happy birthday to me.

Thanksgiving I drove to Salem, OH and spent the day with my friend Steve, his wife Farah, their children, Steve's parents Bob and Beverly and Farah's dad. Farah, her son, Bob and Beverly are all deaf, so it gave me a good chance to freshen up my ASL.

I did a bit of cyber-shopping on Black Friday and actually set foot in one store, well after the early morning insanity had come and gone.

Over the weekend, I started putting away Halloween and fall decorations and started dragging out the Christmas decor. Somewhere in there, I also managed to apply for unemployment compensation and register online with OhioMeansJobs and reinstate my resume on Monster.com (#3i4zqzqjt99b75ya for any interested employers reading this, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

And today, I am officially unemployed. I woke this morning to the realization that I had no real purpose for getting out of bed. Yet I did, at 6:30 a.m. and got online to start the hunt.

Losing a job is like breaking up with a girlfriend or boyfriend. You wonder what you did wrong, why someone else was kept instead of you. You wonder if they'll call and want you back. You wonder if you want to go back.

From the beginning, I decided that this is an opportunity. Fuck SGS. I have mad skills and someone else will be lucky to hire me. I know the carbide cutting tool market inside and out -- from manufacturing through application, everything about distribution, both domestic and international. I know supervision, from keeping call centers running to juggling employee schedules and maintaining ISO 9002 documentation. I know event planning -- from hotels to welcome baskets, from delivering training to organizing lunches and dinners. I know marketing, from flyers and graphics to websites and e-mail blasts. And of course, I've never lost my touch for freelance writing/editing. And I'm not afraid of hard work; at SGS 50 hour weeks were hardly uncommon.

I'll be okay. In fact, this may be the kick in the ass I needed to find something I truly enjoy, something I can believe in.

And if anyone from SGS reads this, you lost one of your best "associates." Idiots.

But I'm not bitter.