Ending the Day

It's a little after one o'clock in the morning and I'm getting tired but not wanting to go to sleep. This Friday is my last standard paycheck: after that, I'm on my severance package (another six weeks, to be sure, but there haven't been a lot of jobs to apply for and they seem they'll be few and far between).

Of course, there's nine months of unemployment payments ahead, and they will more than cover the necessities of life and my bills, but that extra money I'm used to won't be there. But I stop and think about all the people in the world who are trying to get food at least once a day and find a dry place to sleep at night and I can't complain too much. A lot of them are right here in this country.

I'm starting in on my networking, reaching out to folks who know folks who might be in a position to help me out. The job coaching company I'm working with says 70 percent of people find jobs by making contacts, not by simply sending out resumes and waiting for an interview. So I'm taking the proactive stance and trying to put myself out there and connect with new people.

The biggest problem I have is keeping things going from day to day. It's very easy to sit around and do nothing. But it's frustrating to go online and find jobs that I really don't want to do. Keeping up with the tutorials online for the Web design programs is also something that I just have to keep hammering away at, as well. I try to keep my focus on the future and stay proactive here in the present. There's a really good position out there for me at some point. The trick is to keep aware so when it comes my way I can reach out and snatch it.

It's a month until my 56th birthday and I'm trying not to feel old: Hard to do when AARP keeps sending stuff in the mail all the time. Then I remind myself that every computer program that I use I learned on my own because they didn't exist when I went to college. I opened the user's manuals and started reading until I had them down. So picking up the new ones is just a matter of doing what I've already done: self-educate to keep up with the changing times.

Publication is something I've been involved with for 20 years, and now it seems like it's starting to evaporate. I have to remember that it's simply changing shape. Things that used to be put on paper are now being put on the Web, so I have to get good at designing for that medium. I like the permanence of print on paper, though, and the Web seems to ephemeral and it changes so quickly.

But now it's time for some sleep. I'll wake up tomorrow and start in again. I pride myself on the fact that I haven't been sitting in front of the TV all day. I've been sitting in front of the computer. At least that's a little more instructive, informative and interactive than daytime TV or watching DVDs that I already own.

They say when God closes a door he opens up a window. I just hope it's not on the seventh floor where I can't crawl in.

Getting in the Groove

I woke up at eight o'clock this morning without the alarm clock (which I have set for 9:40 a.m.). I took this as a good sign, since I went to bed at 2 a.m. Most mornings this last week I was getting up at 10:30 or 11. I'd wake up at nine or so, but the bed felt soooo comfortable and letting the brain just sleep or loll or wander felt so good that I'd slip back and waste all those potentially productive hours.

Last Sunday we went out and got peat moss and chicken wire (which I found out is correctly called "poultry netting") and we made us a peat stick for the orchid plant that Kittie and David gave us as a cutting a couple years back. It's been making efforts to flourish but has never quite made it. Back sometime last year, I got the idea of getting a peat stick for it so there was something it could climb on root in. We'd gotten a stick wrapped in coconut fiber at Whole Foods a while back, but it was too dense for the ropey roots to take hold.

So's with a peat stick, what it is is a stick with peat moss wrapped around it and chicken wire (excuse me: poultry netting) to hold the whole thing together. I've been looking for one for months and none of the nurseries around here has one. This is why we went out and got the materials ourselves. Took about 15 minutes to make it. Doesn't it look pretty?

More exciting news: On Wednesday I attended an orientation seminar at Lee Hecht Harrison, which is a company that helps corporate types develop an effective job search. As part of my severance package, the Nielsen Corporation has footed the bill for this service. LHH doesn't actually look for the jobs, but they do instruct you on how to put together the paperwork and information you need to make your next career move effectively, rather than going out and taking whatever happens to be out there. And they have coaches who help you out with whatever aspect of your job search you're having trouble with.

There's also a monster Web site with several proprietary sections that link you up with human resources resources (which is kind of like Hamburger Helper Helper for employment) and lots of samples of resumes and positioning statements, etc. In this tough job market, with publication houses folding like fresh laundry, these are good tools to have. But the biggest thing they do for you is push you to keep looking and structure the process.

And I couldn't close this entry without at least a passing comment about all these famous people dying this week. I think it's an absolute shame about Michael Jackson, especially since he was younger than I am, and it always disturbs me when I hear about someone younger dying, not because it's tragic, but because it's unsettling. I have to remind myself that I'm entering that phase of life when I could pop my clocks at any time.

But I can remember being young and seeing the Jackson Five on TV, envying young Michael his fame and wondering what it must be like to be so famous so soon. When he came out with "Ben," I knew he was going to be a star in his own right, but none of us had any idea of what he would sculpt himself into in the end. I cannot abide by the inexplicable hours of "breaking news" coverage that he got, though; even the BBC spent their entire American broadcast with non-news "maybes" and "he might be's." That's not news; that's pictures from helicopters and journalists just guessing.

But perhaps the most ironic aspect of the whole story is that when he died, his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame was covered up by the red carpet laid outside Grauman's Chinese Theater for the premier of "Bruno," Sacha Cohen's latest effort (he's the one who gave us "Borat"). Unscathed, the Michael Jackson fans came upon the star of same-name L.A. radio talk-show host, Michael Jackson, and they began putting the flowers and offerings around that star. It was a star. It had the right name on it. That's Hollywood.

Farrah Fawcett was not too much of a surprise, since we knew she was struggling with cancer for many years. And it's not like she was a massive talent or anything, but she was just so darned well liked by everyone, had a respectable body of work and, to paraphrase Steve Martin, many a young man in the 1970s spent a lot of time holding up her poster with one hand.

And Ed McMahon: Sure, he was involved in those sweepstakes scandals and he was reportedly a fuming reactionary Republican who couldn't manage his finances, but he was Johnny Carson's best friend on TV, and so he was ours, too. I always thought of him as a zany, alcoholic uncle, the one you could always insult and socially abuse without fear of reprisal. Here's another person who had no real talent of his own but fell smack dab in the sugar of celebrity and it stuck for years after his relevance as a second banana for Johnny Carson had passed.

Well, one of the things we learned at Lee Hecht Harrison was that you have to structure your time when job searching, just like you do with any other job (because looking for a job is your job now, you see?). So my free time this morning is coming to a close. From 10 a.m. to noon I work on the job search, which means following the 10 milestones to meaningful career change. Then from 1 until 3 p.m. I study online for Flash and Dreamweaver (also Actionscript and Javascript). Steve gets home around 3:45, so all must stop while I lavish him with attention.

Up to Date

I am much calmer these days. I have no real news to convey, except I have found a quiet spot in myself again. I have gotten over the insomnia and have fully accepted the fact that I am no longer part of The Hollywood Reporter and it is no longer a part of me, except for an entry in my resume and a whole lot of work in my portfolio.

It happened the other night in a dream: I had returned to PCPA in Santa Maria as a stage manager for a new show. Elizabeth Guider, the editor-in-chief and my cubicle buddy at THR, was the director of the show, and all the staff at the THR were the cast and crew. As I was setting up my office, I noted that I finally got one with windows.

About then, a mob came down the street, wrecking everything in sight (this was just after the Lakers won and people were "rioting" in the streets in downtown L.A.). They cracked the windows of my office, I ran out and grabbed a baseball bat out of the mob leader's hands, then realized it would do no good to disarm them, and gave it back.

After the police arrived and the mob cleared, cast and crew went back into the rehearsal room and we checked out the costumes, which had garish inflatable headdresses on them, looking like a cross between Lifesaver candies and brightly colored blow-up sex dolls. In the middle of rehearsal, there was a very strong earthquake, but I herded everyone to a safe place in the building and all were OK.

About that time I woke up and thought to myself, "These people are now all in a show at PCPA, which is part of my past; these people are a part of my past as well. That's when it gelled for me and some peace came.

So I'm much more comfortable with the idea of being in career free fall right now. And I'm much more focused on getting things done next week that will move me forward. So today, we went out and I got a plant for my desk at home, which makes it much pleasanter. (Here's a picture.) I also dropped off my olive-green suede shoes at Zinky's downtown for new heels (conservative, no stilettos) and some repair on the stitching. I love these shoes and, oddly enough, bought them the last time I was unemployed (1998) as part of my interviewing outfit. They've been sitting in the closet for years, and it seems appropriate that they now walk me into the next phase of my career. Ah, tradition.

It's getting late. Steve is probably already asleep. I should head in and join him.

Love to everybody.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

I promised to keep this blog updated and I certainly have the time to do it. Weekends are nice now, because I don't have to work Sundays, so Steve and I have two days together each week. This is a treat for us.

This past week I've been dealing with insomnia, getting to bed around 2 or 3 a.m. (one night I was up until 4 a.m.). I was fully expecting this symptom, though, since it was what happened the last time I was unemployed. And I also learned last time that having a couple drinks before bedtime doesn't really resolve the problem, it just makes me sleep for an hour or two, and then I wake up unable to get back to sleep.

And what did we do this weekend? Clean the carpets? Spruce up the patio? No, we went shopping. And what did we get? A new desk for me. Since I lived in Hollywood, my computer has been on a tiny cart not much wider than the monitor itself. Needless to say, it was very difficult to get any kind of work done without having an auxiliary table or surface upon which to put all my stuff. Well, since my departure from The Reporter, due to my incipient redundancy, I have thought about getting up to speed on Web design, since that's the skill everyone seems to be clamoring for these days. But it was going to be hard to do on that little cart.

So we went shopping, and I found this great new desk for $60. It came in an incredibly small box (about the size of the desktop itself), all folded up with instructions.

It's an amazing design and the directions for assembly were also amazingly complete and clear. It only took about four hours, but now I have this lovely desk with enough room to spread out and take notes and such on the two programs that I am learning at present: Flash and Dreamweaver.

Flash is the program that provides all those nifty animated elements on the Web, and Dreamweaver is a page layout program for the Internet. Between the two, it's possible to mount anything from a small and personal Web site up to one with thousands of pages, like a retail site. And I had presence of mind enough to purchase them in the Adobe Design Suite. It was a whopping $1200, but it includes these programs as well as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat; just about everything a graphic designer needs, this side of 3-D imaging.

So now I have to make good and put the nose to the grindstone: At least an hour a day for both Flash and Dreamweaver. I figure at that pace, I should have salable skills within two to three months. The final outcome will be a Web site of my own, touting my past design experience and showing off my new knowledge about design for the Web.

Sounds pretty good, eh? And all from my spiffy new desk with the incredible price tag.

It's late. Steve's already asleep in bed. I'd better join him, even though I'm really not too sleepy at all. And if I end up getting back up and unable to sleep, at least I'll have this entry to look at...from my new desk!

Forced Vacation Update

This being my first week of unemployment (or nonemployment, since I'm on the payroll until July 3 and then will start receiving my severance package at that point), I thought I'd write a line or two.

Today was Steve's birthday, so I was busy getting a present and putting together a nice dinner for this evening. It was good because it got me out of the house, and I'm starting to get a little agoraphobic, choosing to sit around the house rather than go out and enjoy myself.

One other recent development, which happened a couple weeks ago but got upstaged by my late writings on "Arsenic & Old Lace" and my trip to Wisconsin, was the passing of Steve's cat Buddy (snoozing here with Christmas Elf and Xmas Bear last holiday season).

He was an orange tabby and was about 14. He had been throwing up a lot in the past few years, but we found that giving him a quarter of a Pepcid daily helped that greatly. Still, it was pretty rough on the ivory-colored berber carpeting, which itself is rather old.

In the last few months he had stopped eating (very unusual for him) and even drinking water. Buddy was looking really bad in the last week or two, just skin and bones and weighing only about four pounds, so Steve decided to have him put to sleep. It was kind of rough and we miss him still.

This leaves us with one cat, Marcel, a very singular cat who will have bursts of affection and then simply go off on his own for hours and hours. Since Buddy has gone, Marcel has taken to being afraid of the television, skirting around it in panic. It's very weird.

One of the things we can have in the house, now that Buddy is gone, is plants. Buddy would eat any kind of plant: real, silk, plastic, and then get sick in the biggest way. So Steve's birthday gift was a plant in a very nice pot. (I also brought back some Fiestaware for him from Red Wing).

So I'm doing fine. I'm concentrating this week on getting out more. I'm contemplating a trip to Hollywood, or maybe Chinatown or Olvera Street; whatever strikes my fancy and is close to a MetroRail station. (Oh, yeah; Universal City Walk!).

Drop me an e-mail if you want. I could use the diversion.
And lord knows I have the time to answer.

Freedom

Freedom is a terrible thing. Freedom with a nice severance package is not too bad.

Yes, for those of you who have not heard (and that's everyone who's not on Facebook), I have been "made redunant" by the Nielsen Corporation, owner of The Hollywood Reporter. Translating that Godless corporate gobbledigook into human speech, it means I've been canned. After almost eight years and a half-dozen rounds of layoffs.

I can't say I was overly surprised. I had been informed that another round was coming this week (this is the fourth time in a single year), but I had also been told my name was not on the short list (which was true for a while). But corporate politics being what they are, I was a pawn that was swapped out, sacrificed for the perceived success of the game. I think there's a chess term for that, but not being a chess player, I can't think of it.

In any case, there simply weren't very many people left there to fire, and they sacked ten of us, which leaves about 12 people to put out the book on a daily basis.

I can't feel too bad because the company I was in was stellar: from the co-publisher, the art director, top editors on down, folks were given their walking papers.

The severance package Nielsen provides is quite nice. For all practical purposes, I am fully employed well into August, with all benefits intact. It's a nice 10-week window in which not to worry too much about stuff. And even after that's expended, unemployment will cover expenses nicely for quite a long while.

So the biggest impact for me now is missing all the folks I've worked with at The Reporter over the last eight years. Every morning I've been getting up and taking the Gold Line into Union Station, then the Purple Line out to Wilshire and Western, where I stared at the Art Deco magnificence of the Wiltern Theater while I waited for the bus that took my down Wilshire and dropped me off a half-block from the office building. That's a routine that I won't have in my life anymore. Here's hoping that my next job will be as easy to access on public transit.

Today I sent an application into the Art Center College of Design here in Pasadena, since they need a design director (who also writes) to fill in for someone going on maternity leave. It runs July through December, so if it pans out, I might be getting salary and severance pay simultaneously for almost six weeks; that would be sweet.

But I'm not trying to plan out the future like that right now. Right now I'm accepting that this is one of those transition points that everyone encounters in their lives, voluntarily or not. So I'm trying to release all the things, good and bad, about this last decade in Los Angeles. There will be things to mourn. There will be things to rejoice in. There will be things to be very, very thankful for.

And soon, there will be a new place, a new job and a new phase of my life will begin. Right now, I'll try to enjoy this corporately enforced vacation. As Fritz Perls said, "You can't push the river; it flows by itself."