LJ Idol 5.23: The Best Thing...
"I'm sorry, but we're going to have to let you go," said my boss.
For a moment, I didn't say anything, but an avalanche of emotions swept through my mind: astonishment, then confusion, anger, outrage, denial, fear, and despair, roughly in that order. I looked at my boss and tried to say something, but he beat me to the punch.
"I'm sorry," he said.
It didn't occur to me to beg for my job back. I doubt it would have had any effect. I got up from my seat, wanting to yell, to hit something. Then I wanted to cry. Instead, I managed to keep breathing. My boss said nothing.
I turned and half-walked, half-staggered to the window. As I looked out, it crossed my mind that Scotts Valley in mid-December just doesn't look very wintry. I took a deep breath and let myself fully absorb the impact of what had just happened. And just like that, I calmed down and tried to focus on how things were going to be okay. My knees were still weak, though.
Per the procedure, my boss asked for me to hand over my company ID and the corporate Amex card, but told me I was welcome to use my office and computer during normal work hours to look for a job, make calls, send out my resume, whatever. Curiously, when I got back to my office, there was a phone message waiting for me from the HR department at Microsoft, asking if I was interested in coming to Redmond for an interview. Things were already looking up.
Returning home in the middle of the afternoon, I told Galina what had happened. Somehow, she had already suspected the worst when I walked in the door. Faced with the prospect of having to look for a job, I said I would not be going along with her and the kids on the week-long vacation we had planned to Colorado at the beginning of January.
"No," she said with something of an edge to her voice. "We've been planning this vacation for a while and let's face it, there is no place you have to be during that week, so you are going with us. Your severance check will keep us going."
So between then and the end of the year, I made calls, sent resumes, and flew to Redmond for an interview. There, I was pleasantly surprised to see two former colleagues in the lobby, and we made small talk while we waited for our respective interviews to begin.
By the end of an intense day filled with 15-minutes interview sessions with what seemed to be half the managers at Microsoft, I felt limp as a dishrag and out of breath. I was not surprised to learn it would be a few days before I would hear back from the company. I had been through this drill before, and anyway, nobody makes hiring decisions around Christmas.
Curiously, as our departure date approached, I also got a call from a translator who had been one of Galina's clients when she did social work with Russian immigrants in Florida. He had somehow learned of our predicament, and wanted to help out.
"Listen," he said, when I called him, "my supervisor is looking for a freelancer to do about 12,000 words, into English, due about the time you get back. The rate of payment is not bad. Are you interested?" In short order, I had an assignment I could work on while the kids were snowboarding, for which I would collect a surprisingly good payday.
What can I say about Colorado? We were located in one of the prettiest spots around, nestled in the San Juan mountains, just down the road from natural hot springs and within eyeshot of the Continental Divide. The air was clean, the people were friendly, and prices for everything were incredibly reasonable.
On our way back to the car from our first trip for groceries, Galina stopped to look at a flyer in the window of a local real-estate company. The flyer featured a five-acre property with a fenced corral and a house whose entire cost was as much as just the down payment on the least expensive property in Santa Cruz, a decrepit fixer-upper that stood on hardly any land in a neighborhood controlled by street gangs.
As the week progressed, and snow fell on top of the nearly shoulder-high accumulation already on the ground, my thoughts began to turn whimsically to the idea of, well..., living in Colorado. I mean, it's not like I had a job that I'd have to quit or a house we'd have to sell, and the kids hadn't really put down roots in California. Anyway, how many times in your life do you get a chance to go somewhere, fall in love with the place, and just move there because you can?
So, two days before we were scheduled to return to California, I turned to Galina at dinner and said, "You know, I've been thinking…"
"Me, too," she said, "and I don’t know if I'm crazy, or what, but... you go ahead and tell me what's on your mind." We played Alphonse and Gaston for a while, each of us being reluctant to be the first to reveal our respective thoughts. I eventually wore Galina down, so she took a deep breath and looked me straight in the eye.
"I think we should move here," she said.
A moment passed, then I started to laugh, and the kids looked at me as if I was crazy. Then Galina and I looked at each other and we just understood, telepathically, that we had been thinking the exact same thing. I mean, what better could you ask for? Nothing stood in the way of our pulling up stakes and transplanting ourselves to Colorado!
Well, almost nothing.
What would I do to keep us fed and sheltered? Well, I could continue to write articles for computer magazines, maybe pick up a couple of regular columns and write another book on programming. I could do some consulting work. And Galina's friend, the translator, had turned me on to the fact that, if nothing else, translation was a viable option, too.
In short, I'd be taking a step that I had been steadfastly reluctant - okay, I'll admit it, scared - to take after having long ago surrendered Galina and the kids as "hostages to fortune," as Bacon so euphemistically put it.
Where would we live? Where would I work? Incredibly, we nailed down about the only rental in town, which turned out to be a manufactured home a couple of miles east of the city limit. Equally incredibly, a two-room office over the town's movie theater was available for a song. Between the two payments for home and office, our monthly outlay for square footage would be about one-third of what we had been paying to rent a townhouse in California.
So, we returned to California with a mission in our heart and a spring in our step. Microsoft called to invite me for a second round of interviews, which I politely declined (making it, perhaps, my bonehead play of the century… but then again, I think not). Three weeks later, I drove a rented truck filled with furniture and books, followed by Galina and the kids in our car, from very nearly the Pacific Ocean to Pagosa Springs.
* * *There have been bumps and detours in our life in Pagosa since moving here, notably the five years we spent in Houston (with our house let out for rent in the interim), but we came back. I no longer write articles for magazines, preferring to translate and interpret full-time. And even though we've gone through a boom fueled by more refugees from California and Texas, the mountains are still breathtakingly beautiful, the grocery clerk still checks to make sure there are no broken eggs in the dozen you put in your cart, and on a clear night, you can look up and truly understand why it's called the Milky Way.
Cheers...
For a moment, I didn't say anything, but an avalanche of emotions swept through my mind: astonishment, then confusion, anger, outrage, denial, fear, and despair, roughly in that order. I looked at my boss and tried to say something, but he beat me to the punch.
"I'm sorry," he said.
It didn't occur to me to beg for my job back. I doubt it would have had any effect. I got up from my seat, wanting to yell, to hit something. Then I wanted to cry. Instead, I managed to keep breathing. My boss said nothing.
I turned and half-walked, half-staggered to the window. As I looked out, it crossed my mind that Scotts Valley in mid-December just doesn't look very wintry. I took a deep breath and let myself fully absorb the impact of what had just happened. And just like that, I calmed down and tried to focus on how things were going to be okay. My knees were still weak, though.
Per the procedure, my boss asked for me to hand over my company ID and the corporate Amex card, but told me I was welcome to use my office and computer during normal work hours to look for a job, make calls, send out my resume, whatever. Curiously, when I got back to my office, there was a phone message waiting for me from the HR department at Microsoft, asking if I was interested in coming to Redmond for an interview. Things were already looking up.
Returning home in the middle of the afternoon, I told Galina what had happened. Somehow, she had already suspected the worst when I walked in the door. Faced with the prospect of having to look for a job, I said I would not be going along with her and the kids on the week-long vacation we had planned to Colorado at the beginning of January.
"No," she said with something of an edge to her voice. "We've been planning this vacation for a while and let's face it, there is no place you have to be during that week, so you are going with us. Your severance check will keep us going."
So between then and the end of the year, I made calls, sent resumes, and flew to Redmond for an interview. There, I was pleasantly surprised to see two former colleagues in the lobby, and we made small talk while we waited for our respective interviews to begin.
By the end of an intense day filled with 15-minutes interview sessions with what seemed to be half the managers at Microsoft, I felt limp as a dishrag and out of breath. I was not surprised to learn it would be a few days before I would hear back from the company. I had been through this drill before, and anyway, nobody makes hiring decisions around Christmas.
Curiously, as our departure date approached, I also got a call from a translator who had been one of Galina's clients when she did social work with Russian immigrants in Florida. He had somehow learned of our predicament, and wanted to help out.
"Listen," he said, when I called him, "my supervisor is looking for a freelancer to do about 12,000 words, into English, due about the time you get back. The rate of payment is not bad. Are you interested?" In short order, I had an assignment I could work on while the kids were snowboarding, for which I would collect a surprisingly good payday.
What can I say about Colorado? We were located in one of the prettiest spots around, nestled in the San Juan mountains, just down the road from natural hot springs and within eyeshot of the Continental Divide. The air was clean, the people were friendly, and prices for everything were incredibly reasonable.
On our way back to the car from our first trip for groceries, Galina stopped to look at a flyer in the window of a local real-estate company. The flyer featured a five-acre property with a fenced corral and a house whose entire cost was as much as just the down payment on the least expensive property in Santa Cruz, a decrepit fixer-upper that stood on hardly any land in a neighborhood controlled by street gangs.
As the week progressed, and snow fell on top of the nearly shoulder-high accumulation already on the ground, my thoughts began to turn whimsically to the idea of, well..., living in Colorado. I mean, it's not like I had a job that I'd have to quit or a house we'd have to sell, and the kids hadn't really put down roots in California. Anyway, how many times in your life do you get a chance to go somewhere, fall in love with the place, and just move there because you can?
So, two days before we were scheduled to return to California, I turned to Galina at dinner and said, "You know, I've been thinking…"
"Me, too," she said, "and I don’t know if I'm crazy, or what, but... you go ahead and tell me what's on your mind." We played Alphonse and Gaston for a while, each of us being reluctant to be the first to reveal our respective thoughts. I eventually wore Galina down, so she took a deep breath and looked me straight in the eye.
"I think we should move here," she said.
A moment passed, then I started to laugh, and the kids looked at me as if I was crazy. Then Galina and I looked at each other and we just understood, telepathically, that we had been thinking the exact same thing. I mean, what better could you ask for? Nothing stood in the way of our pulling up stakes and transplanting ourselves to Colorado!
Well, almost nothing.
What would I do to keep us fed and sheltered? Well, I could continue to write articles for computer magazines, maybe pick up a couple of regular columns and write another book on programming. I could do some consulting work. And Galina's friend, the translator, had turned me on to the fact that, if nothing else, translation was a viable option, too.
In short, I'd be taking a step that I had been steadfastly reluctant - okay, I'll admit it, scared - to take after having long ago surrendered Galina and the kids as "hostages to fortune," as Bacon so euphemistically put it.
Where would we live? Where would I work? Incredibly, we nailed down about the only rental in town, which turned out to be a manufactured home a couple of miles east of the city limit. Equally incredibly, a two-room office over the town's movie theater was available for a song. Between the two payments for home and office, our monthly outlay for square footage would be about one-third of what we had been paying to rent a townhouse in California.
So, we returned to California with a mission in our heart and a spring in our step. Microsoft called to invite me for a second round of interviews, which I politely declined (making it, perhaps, my bonehead play of the century… but then again, I think not). Three weeks later, I drove a rented truck filled with furniture and books, followed by Galina and the kids in our car, from very nearly the Pacific Ocean to Pagosa Springs.
* * *There have been bumps and detours in our life in Pagosa since moving here, notably the five years we spent in Houston (with our house let out for rent in the interim), but we came back. I no longer write articles for magazines, preferring to translate and interpret full-time. And even though we've gone through a boom fueled by more refugees from California and Texas, the mountains are still breathtakingly beautiful, the grocery clerk still checks to make sure there are no broken eggs in the dozen you put in your cart, and on a clear night, you can look up and truly understand why it's called the Milky Way.
Cheers...