I was planning on writing about debt today, about where we are and my plan to get us out of it. But then I woke up this morning and found out that yep, it’s official: within the next month or so, I will be out of a job. Debt talk pushed aside for next time.
What’s amazing about this development is how many condolences I’ve been hearing. I’m not ungrateful for everyone’s well wishes, but I also don’t know how to say that I’m fine with this development. Borders has given me nothing in the past few years to make me feel sad about losing this job, other than the paycheck.
I’m not going to wax poetic about the loss of all these bricks and mortar bookstores. The fact is, it hasn’t felt like the Borders that I fell in love with for a long time. I remember being shocked when I was in college by the selection of critical works or obscure fiction that I could find on the shelves at Borders that I could never find at Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million. Having worked at Books-a-Million for most and high school and college, moving on to Borders and the up-to-date inventory system was a revelation.
But that was eight years ago. I feel like Borders has been losing those things that made me love it so slowly but steadily throughout those years, and within the past year I saw it all pretty much disappear. I’m not going to mourn the loss of something if it’s been gone for a long time.
When Andrew lost his job last year, I could tell he felt like it was a little bit of a slam on his self worth. Even though it was an across the board slash of his position, he felt like it was something he should have been able to prevent. I know at least one other coworker who feels that way now, and to those people I just have to remind them: no matter how many copies of “The Help” we could handsell, no matter how precise our inventory processing was, and no matter how beautiful our displays might be, you and I weren’t going to be able to turn this place around. I am not the problem, and none of my coworkers are the problem. Once you realize that you’re just a pawn in the middle of bad business practices, it’s pretty easy to shrug and say, “Eh.”
I found out about it this morning, and I spent most of the morning texting furiously with people who wanted to know answers or wondered if I knew anything more than they did. I don’t really know anything other than that I’m going to have some free time in my future. I’m ecstatic about that idea. As long as it’s a short term proposition. If we get into the three month range I might start to freak out a little bit, but for now I’m completely okay.
It’s kick in the pants time, people. I know that it’s going to be hard to find another job. I also know that I was never going to put in the effort to find one while I had steady employment to fall back upon. Having the time to put in the energy and brainpower into finding something else is exciting.
So what’s my plan for the next few weeks? I’ll go into work. See how much longer I’m going to be there and if I’m getting severance (God, give me severance – only thing I’m stressed about). I’m going to go to all the doctors I can while I’m still insured. I picked out a new pair of glasses today while I still could – and they’re purple, because God knows that I wanted something funny and frivolous on a day like today.
I also bought a suit, a really cute and modern suit that cost a little more than I planned on spending. But I’ve watched enough "What Not to Wear" to know that it’s an investment, and each of the three pieces can be worn alone. At the end of each episode, Stacy and Clinton try to pull a fast one on you and say that the participant can make 72 outfits out of 15 articles of clothing, but I feel like this particular suit comes with endless possibilities. I put it on a credit card, which leads me back to my original thought about what I was going to write about today.
I’ll talk about debt in the next post, and about how it’s the only part of my plan that I actually had a plan for… before I found out I’m going to get laid off. Time to restructure the plan! But for today, I think I’m going to go admire my pretty pretty suit.
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