Am I Getting Let Go? What Do I Do?

We're going through some big changes at the company where I work and everyone is nervous.  Information on future plans is hard to come by so speculation is running rampant and most people are thinking lay offs.  Ugh!  Nothing more stressful than thinking you're going to lose your job, especially in the middle of the holidays.

I've worked at this company for nearly 30 years.  It's a solid, well respected company, a good place to work and I like my coworkers.  The thought of being in my early fifties and suddenly having to search for a new job is scary.  I'm close enough to retirement that I'm starting to plan for what I'll be doing but far enough away that I can't stop working if those plans are going to be fulfilled.  It's not just about being on a permanent vacation either - it's considering how I'll pay for healthcare, prescription drugs or what I'll do if I need assistance for every day living.

About a month or so ago I noted this feeling of dread that I was going to face 'permanent separation' as HR refers to it, come January.  It's a feeling of total loss of control over your circumstances.  Once I realized that I just wanted to be the one making the decisions, I started to do some research.  My company has a Severance Plan.  I checked to see what someone in my position would receive.  Due to my length of service, I get a respectable amount of Severance - I get paid for a set number of weeks after I'm let go that includes my health benefits.  The company would no longer contribute to my 401k, but I'd still have medical, dental and vision coverage during the Severance period.  That's one big worry taken care of.

Next, I checked to see what laws might be out there to protect me and what the protections include.  I'm a woman, I'm in my early fifties and I'm retirement eligible in another year and a half (you have to be 55 and have worked for the company for 10 years to be retirement eligible).  I came across the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990 which detail what is required by employers including how much notice you should receive prior to a layoff and your rights regarding signing waivers.  I looked up applying for Unemployment Benefits in the State of Maryland.

Following that I thought, how do I make the most of my time on severance?  I came up with a plan for my days - still getting up at the same time Monday through Friday.  Walking my dogs at the same time I always do.  Then, instead of going to the office after I shower, spending my day job hunting.  That includes things like networking - having lunch with people I know who work at companies where I might like to work.  Going to professional meet-ups for Project Managers and other groups so that I can get the word out that I'm looking.  In other words, my new full time job is finding a new full time job and it has the same hours as the old job and I have to work just as hard at it.

I plan to take advantage of my severance to also do things I can't do right now - like go on a bike ride during the day or a swim.  Getting fit was on my high priority list.  If I'm going to be stressed because I'm out of work, it seems like exercise might help with that.  Also, I feel like fitter, happier people might have an edge with employers.  Exercising leaves me in a good mood.  I sleep better, I eat better and I have a better outlook.  I'll need all the positive energy I can get.

Last, I decided that I would create a one page document - front and back if need be - that I keep with me at all times.  It's something I can grab when HR shows up at my office and I know this is it.  The information on that page is what I learned from the laws I read and a checklist of things I should ask about when I'm going through the separation process and before I sign anything.

Now that I've gone through this whole exercise I actually feel more in control.  I still don't want to get let go, but if it happens I'm ready and I know what my plan is.  Happy Holidays.

Veteran's Day - Never Forget

Today is Veteran's Day, a time when we all take a moment to recall November 11, 1918 when the guns of war fell silent on distant shores and ushered in a turbulent peace with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June the following year.  Much of what we've experienced in the 100 years since then has been a direct result of that war, that treaty.  From World War II to Vietnam and the Middle East, many conflicts owe their origins to a lack of foresight by the leaders in the room on that day.  Harsh punishments against Germany and doors shut in people's faces who would later take the world stage such as Ho Chi Minh, were the seeds of future wars.

Today we thank our soldiers for their service and we say to them never forget.  What does never forget mean though?  It seems like today its only words, uttered to make us feel okay with not really thinking about what we're asking our young citizens, mostly from blue collar, lower income and poor families, to sacrifice.  Often times the military for them is a way to step up the financial staircase to make a better life - to get to college and a decent paying job that lets them actually pursue the happiness many of us take for granted.  Many of them come home broken, physically and emotionally, with injuries that may never heal.

World War I was a miserable war.  It unleashed chemical weapons like mustard gas and it was one of the deadliest wars ever.  It's estimated that 16 million people died in that war with around 37 million casualties - military and civilian combined. 

We owe it to our soldiers to never forget.  The casualties of today's wars are tomorrow's enemies that we then send our sons and daughters off to fight.  With the ending of the draft many Americans have been able to ignore wars and those fighting them and to pay lip service with bumper stickers and empty words that demand nothing from us.  It's easy to support a war when your kid, your Mom and Dad, aren't off fighting in it.

Never forget means knowing how your elected officials vote when it comes to war and why.  Never forget means holding the Congress accountable and not allowing them to hand a President a blank check to make war.  Never forget means our active duty military are paid well and have health care benefits for themselves and their families. Never forget means honest, comprehensive debate about the rationale for and the consequences of any war before we send a single soldier off to fight.  Never forget means demanding the VA is fully funded to take care of our soldiers and veterans, and not just their physical injuries but their emotional ones as well.  Never forget means there should not be a single homeless veteran in this country.  Never forget means educating yourself and writing letters, calling and attending town halls of your elected representatives to ensure they're passing legislation to protect and provide for our veterans and active duty military.  Never forget means showing up to vote.  Until we do all this, they're just meaningless words.

Lastly, thank you for your service Dad, Grandpa, Uncle Al, Uncle Bud, Uncle Don, Uncle Nich, and Patrick.

What Happened to Halloween?

I'm sitting here in my living room awaiting the Treaters.  I have time to post a blog because there are hardly any out there.  In years past I've purchased the big bag of candy with Nerds and Sweet Tarts and all the tooth decaying sugar that kids love, only to be left with half of it.  I've bought the lollipops, that I then brought to the office to fatten up my coworkers.  I've had the Monster Mash playing on the stereo and I've purchased Dracula teeth to hand out with the candy.   I have a lot of Dracula teeth left over.  The kids who did come around loved them, but there weren't that many.

I loved Halloween as a kid.  I started out very young in a homemade costume my Dad came up with - pillows strapped around my waist to give me girth, I wore a pair of his Bermuda shorts and one of his shirts, a fishing hat and clown makeup.  I was a hit!  Clown was very popular in our house, but we also wore the store bought costumes with the plastic masks.  Every year my little brother was some form of Ninja.  We've been ghosts and aliens and washer women.  As an older kid I dressed up to head to Georgetown or Fells Point with a bunch of friends.  Now as a mature adult I love being the one to hand out the candy.

When I was a kid I remember waiting for my Dad to come home from work to help us with our costumes.  Neighborhood kids would already be starting to come around and my Mom was handing out candy and still we weren't out there!!  The whole neighborhood would be out, gangs of kids with bags and pillowcases full of candy.  It was not unusual for my Mom to run out of candy some years because there were so many Treaters out.  My sister and I were always so proud of ourselves when we treated every single house in our neighborhood. 

I don't know what happened to Trick or Treating.  I don't know why only a few kids come around.  I'm glad they do.  This year I bought the big candy bars because well, when there's only a few I can afford to go big.  A hefty reward to the kids who are still carrying on the tradition. 

Boo!

What Future Do We Want?

Sometimes someone tells a story about themselves or an event and everyone around them reacts as if they've been judged.  "Our team is doing great work!"  Well, so is my team.  "People are being mean to me!" Wait, I'm not being mean to you.  "White people are racist", wait a second, I'm not a racist.  "Black Lives Matter!" Wait, don't all lives matter?  And so on and so on.

These past few weeks I've heard folks screaming about due process and worrying that their sons will be falsely accused of sexual assault, that past infractions could come out of the blue to take their sons down.  All of these responses obfuscate what is actually happening - they derail us with their perceived, potential victimhood from talking about real issues that in most instances are life altering, and even life threatening.  That the main issue we are arguing this week, and almost every week, is about progress.

That's right, progress.  Do we halt progress in its tracks, or do we push it forward and closer to the ideals embodied in our Constitution that we claim we are trying to live by?  At the end of the day, isn't that what American exceptionalism is all about?  Not that we've achieved everything already, but that we believe in the ideals embodied in the US Constitution, despite the fact that even as they were written down that the men doing the writing were not living up to the standard they espoused?   

I am disappointed but not surprised by the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.  His appointment, like Gorsuch's before him, sets us back decades on the road of progress.  As did the election of the man who appointed both of them.  Progress is scary to a lot of people, and so they went with not just what they knew, but what they feel serves them best.  Fear of progress is what has lead America to dismantle the New Deal, weaken environmental regulations, undercut unions and the voting rights act, prevent women from enjoying full autonomy of their persons - and not just in reproduction, but apparently daily life as well, and to embrace corporations as people with money acting as their version of free speech and silencing the rest of us.  

I am hopeful that next month's elections will bring some turnaround to all this, but I would suggest that we can no longer just vote and hope for the best.  I'm excited by the number of people participating in peaceful protests, starting with the anti-Muslim ban and showing up at airports around the country, to teachers showing up in state capitols and demanding higher pay and better resources, to the women protesting at the Senate hearings for Judge Kavanaugh.  We can no longer take for granted what we've achieved, every day we need to tend to the care and feeding of that progress to keep ourselves moving forward.  Voting is our number one duty, but following our elected representatives as they vote on important issues, writing and calling them to let them know where we stand and how we wish them to act, is also critically important.  

Remember this, no election is unimportant and every vote your elected representatives take once in office is just as important as yours on election day.  Prepare yourself for what you can do - read, listen, write, call, attend town halls, join a political club, donate to the candidates who most closely represent what you want, and vote.  Get to the polls to vote or fill out an absentee ballot.  Get your friends to do the same.  Put up yard signs, get a bumper sticker, volunteer to phone bank or write postcards for your candidate.  Get out and knock on a few doors.  Whatever you do, don't sit by yourself and lose hope.  The future is ours, we just need to demand it back.

Overwhelming Sadness Cured or How I Learned to Relax and Save the World

This is not a post about depression, but it could be.  It seems these days that everywhere we turn the problems we thought we were solving are now worse than ever.  From policies that separate children from parents that do irreparable damage, to knowing that folks in Flint, Michigan still don't have clean drinking water and the global war machine, it feels like a nightmare from which we might never wake up.  And then I started reading the New York Times long piece on how we missed our best opportunity to halt climate change.  It's just too much. The feelings of despair are real and I wonder every single day how I can make a difference in my small piece of the world or will I just be crushed by this feeling of utter helplessness?

Enter Ralph Nader.  For those of you who just rolled your eyes let me point something out to you about Ralph that you might not know - when you get compensated by an airline when they bump you from a flight either in flight vouchers or cash he's the one you can thank.  He successfully sued Allegheny Airlines in 1972 when he was bumped from a confirmed flight and now the airlines have to compensate us.  He's always fighting for the average person to be treated fairly by the powerful.

In August 2016 Ralph Nader released his book, Breaking Through Power, that offers real solutions to big problems.  Have you got 6 hours a week to volunteer?  Turns out you can change the world.  I read this book at the start of summer and it's my go to when I think the world is ending.  In the book Ralph lists organizations that are doing the hard work of changing the world, but they need us and our 6 hours a week.

Breaking Through Power is a short read, and I won't try to recreate it here, but I highly recommend spending a few hours with it and then deciding where you want to spend your six hours of volunteering each week so we can save the world.

I Don't Want to Quit Facebook

One Sunday a month I get together with a group of friends, some of whom I've known since Kindergarten, to have breakfast.  When we graduated from High School in the early 1980s Facebook did not exist.  We all went off to college, or joined the military or went to work and we lost track of one another.  I coached soccer locally in Columbia for several years and ran in to one or two of them on the soccer pitch as they watched their kids play, but mostly I didn't know what any of them were up to.

I have cousins who are more than ten years older and more than then years younger than I am.  We all grew up in different states and we just don't see each other all that much unless there's a funeral or a wedding.  Growing up we saw a lot more of one another as we traveled to visit grandparents and great aunts and uncles.  Once that older generation moved on though, the visits were less and less as we all had very busy lives at home with siblings getting married and children arriving.   We prioritized immediate family over cousins.

Then one day we all found each other on Facebook.  Joining Facebook was one reconnection after another - friends and family we'd lost touch with were all there.  We were posting pictures of our kids, our vacations, and our family celebration.  We found out some of us lived pretty close to one another having moved out of state and we reconnected.  You're going to be in California?  Let me know when and we'll get together for dinner.  You're coming back East?  Let us know and we'll have a mini reunion.  

All of this reconnection was brought to us by Facebook.  That monthly breakfast would never have happened if not for Facebook.  I stay connected with new friends via Facebook.  The dog rescue I volunteer with uses Facebook to broadcast adoption events and fundraisers.  I personally manage a Facebook page that is community oriented and connects people via their pets.  I belong to local political clubs that communicate events and other activities via Facebook.

I'm also one of those people who likes to share and discuss politics with some of my friends via Facebook.  I've joined some Facebook groups that are a walk down memory lane, creating even more connections sometimes with people who grew up near me but I never knew until Facebook.

A while back I wrote a post about privacy and the information we unwittingly share when we're online.  I'm not here to defend Facebook for its transgressions.  They're not the only ones using us to make a buck though.  I feel like the horse is already out of the barn on this one, my data is out there and there's not a lot I can do about that.  I do think Congress and State legislatures though can pass some laws regulating transparency so that you know exactly what you're giving up when you use Facebook. 

I am also willing to pay for Facebook.  At this point there are so many users that if we each paid $1 a month Facebook could rake in $2.13 billion for that month.  I feel like they could sustain their business on that, and then some.  Maybe they could start a scholarship fund with the excess and send kids to college.  Just a suggestion.

I'm not going to quit Facebook.  I like being connected with all these folks and I don't want to lose that and I don't see a viable alternative.   

You Marched, Now Go Vote

I haven't posted anything in a long while and that's mostly because I've spent the past year putting my money where my mouth is.  I joined several local political groups including, the Women's Democratic Alliance of Howard County and the Ellicott City and Western Howard County Democratic Club.  I've spent several Saturdays knocking on doors for Dan Medinger who is running for the Maryland House of Delegates in 9B. 

I spent today in Washington, D.C. attending the March for Our Lives.  One of my first real world memories is of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F Kennedy when I was three years old.  These were big events in my house and happened as we were making a big move overseas, lodging them in my young memory.  If the song "Abraham, Martin and John" comes on the radio it always makes me cry.

I'm now back home from the march and watching some of the coverage on television and MSNBC announced a crowd estimate of around 800,000.  The speakers at the march, all kids, did an incredible job and I think this may be just the wakeup call we need.  The kids chant that "Enough is Enough" is right on.  The crowd also chanted "Vote Them Out!!" in between speakers and therein lies the key to making change happen if we really want it.

In 1994 the Clinton administration signed the Assault Weapons Ban and that fall the Congress flipped.  People who are against laws that limit gun ownership in any shape or form turned out to vote.  Similarly at the State level, politicians who vote for any kind of limitation on gun ownership get voted out of office.  Gun owners are single issue voters and they turn out to vote.

The rest of us have been willing to accept a mixed bag of support on issues we care deeply about as long as the person we voted for was a member of the party we aligned ourselves with.  We can no longer afford to do that.  We need to vote for people who will fight for the issues we care about no matter what side of the aisle they sit on and including third party candidates.

We can no longer afford to sit out primaries because that's where we can really make our voices heard first.  We must find out who is running and what they stand for - and that means not just watching political ads or looking at party affiliation, but reading about candidates in local newspapers and going to meet them and talk to them.  The local political clubs have been holding candidate forums and they've been getting a big turnout.  These are real chances to talk to your candidates and find out where they stand and why.  At a picnic last Labor Day I asked a gubernatorial candidate where he stood on universal health care and his answer was not what I wanted to hear and so he doesn't have my vote in the primaries coming up in June.  Candidates are also holding events themselves and sharing that information on various political pages on Facebook and elsewhere.  Take the time to find out what they stand for, and don't be afraid to ask them tough questions. 

It's also imperative to work for the candidate you want to get elected.  From knocking on doors or working the elections (I'll be working the early voting days) every little bit helps.  And of course, if no candidate matches up to what you want, then maybe its time to think about running yourself.

Voting has always been important, but maybe finally we're understanding just how important it actually is.  We need to be laser focused on the issues we care most about and we need to turn out to vote for the people who will fight for those issues.  Our lives depend on it.