On being a statistic

I’m not quite a statistic yet, but I will be soon. Those of you who follow me on facebook know why: I was laid off on Monday.

It’s a strange feeling. My first reaction was the obvious one: “Oh crap. NOW what?” The one after that was: “I can sleep in.” Says everything, doesn’t it? I was massively burned out, and it showed in all sorts of ways. Now I’m in recovery and looking for a new job. One that does not require the ability to keep one’s soul from being eaten by the Elder Gods would be nice, although being familiar with ways to ward off eldritch horrors will no doubt be useful.

Right now I’m still very much in recovery. There’s still no “there” there, and I don’t expect to see any for a while yet. It usually takes me a week or two to recover and get the need to write back. In the meantime I’m applying for jobs (software QA, 8 years experience, most of it involving manual and automated testing for those who know someone who knows someone. I’ve also worked as a software developer in the dim distant past), slowly catching up on long-delayed house organization, and trying not to stress. Weirdly, I’m in better shape emotionally than I thought I’d be – I’m not devastated, I’m just kind of numb. Possibly I half expected something like this, and had prepared for it. Or maybe knowing what needs to happen and that I’m a fairly desirable quantity for employers is what’s doing it (7 years at the last job, got the chop along with department manager and a number of other senior – and highly paid – people. Yeah. They did it to save money. I’m expecting them to find out that I was doing my usual thing of enough work for three other people. The place I was at before this one had to hire five people to replace me, and three of them were gone within six months. It’s because I’m lazy: I find ways to do it in less time than anyone else would take).

At any rate, I’m mostly numb. And of course, I’ll soon be an addition to the unemployment statistics. Yay me.

Naturally, a part of my brain is busy cataloging the whole thing for use somewhere in my writing. At some stage in the future, one of my characters will get handed a life-changing – bordering on life-shattering – shock and will respond more or less the way I’m responding now. It probably won’t be recognizable as the response to my being laid off, because in my brain things mutate. That part of being a writer is still working nicely, so I expect to get the rest back as I recover from burnout.

One thing I am sure about: recovery will happen. On its own bloody timeline of course, but it will happen. Something will insist that I write it now and that will be that.