Realignment pt 3 (and other concerns)

Some pieces of good news.  I will be offered a full severance package based on my years of service.  Which will amount to three months of pay after my final day.  And it looks like the move won’t happen till the second week of January, which means I’ll also get cashed out for next years vacation.  Hopefully they don’t decide to can me early, like before Christmas so they don’t have to pay me my vacation.  Would be just my luck. 

I really need to get back my home Net access, cause it’s kinda hard to research jobs from a library computer.  And my laptop needs a new hard drive (yes I know, I might as well get a new laptop but I don’t have the money).  It’ll be fine but slow for about an hour, and then freeze up completely.

My current dilemma is this: do I stay in a dying field (printing) that I’m totally burned out in but have fifteen years experience with or strike out in a new direction in the middle of a recession?  And what direction would that be?  I’m kind of a jack-o’-all-trades that can do just about anything if shown how, but that’s not what employers are looking for.  I have some college experience but no degrees due to continually losing my focus at critical times.  In short, I’m almost 40 and I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.  And I don’t have the time or the money to take lengthy schooling for another skill, and I still gotta hold down a job.

Also I’m seriously considering relocating to Houston, close to my stepmother, because that’s where the jobs and cheap housing seem to be.  I’d have to find a job and stay with her until I can find our own place, in which I’d move Yes Dear, PBJ, and Ne-hi out from GA, which might be okay.  However there is a long list of obvious logistical challenges involved, not the least of will my worn out Bonneville survive a trip out there and get me to work every day?  And right now I’m concerned about leaving my family alone because of a situation stemming from a minor fender-bender at my wife’s work escalating into harassment of her by  some threatening characters, to the point of having to put out a restraining order.  Worse yet, they know where we live.  So I’ve loaded up My Little Friend with the buckshot rounds and am keeping it in an easily accessible location, and am seriously looking into a bedside handgun, when I can afford it.  I refuse to become another story on the eleven-o-clock news. 

So this is what I’m looking at for the next few months.  I’m kinda happy to be finally getting out of where I am and getting a goodish chunk of change with it, but of course I’m not looking forward to having to job hunt after 11 years of continuous employment. 

As the world turns.

~ by The Real Dave on September 27, 2008.