The New Beginning

Picture it, February 15th two thousand and twelve. It was the morning after Valentine's Day. FJ had just had a lovely evening with her longtime bae. She awoke, still slightly askew from a heavy surf n turf dinner and two too many celebratory champagne spritzers. She was exhausted, laying there for what seemed like an hour staring at the ceiling, eyes filling with water, deciding which voice to use for her quarterly sick day voice mail. The nasally one with the slight dry cough or the whiny, dramatic, and if I don't feel better in a couple hours I may just have to walk in to my doctor's office one. That's the one you use if your boss happened to surprise you by picking up the phone because he was in the office too early. After she remembered she had a deadline, and it had only been a month since the last sick day performance, she decided to roll herself out of bed and head on in to the office.

At 11:17am, just after she finished her online registration for her audition for The Voice (it was literally seconds after receiving the email confirmation from NBC Studios) she got a call from her bosses boss, and the head HR guy from the corporate office asking her to meet them in a conference room. Now it was nearly two years after the corporate merger and fast approaching the deadline for severance packages to be handed out from the new company if they chose to eliminate jobs. FJ left her desk, half worried, half hopeful. She walked into the cold conference room and sat directly across from them. Then it happened.

With faux concern on his face and the obligatory tone of regret in is voice, the big wig pushed that beautiful twelve by twelve inch manila envelope just a few inches from her reach. Trying desperately to conceal her excitement (because who in their right mind would be happy to be laid off from a good steady gig) she opened that envelope and with her eyes affixed to the emboldened total at the bottom of the page the first word that came to her mind was, Deal!

Of course she knew better than to say it. She did however ask where should she sign and motioned for a pen to get the party started (It was her first layoff, she was ignorant to protocol, so sue her). Anyway, the big wig then informed her that she would need to take the document home, look it over and return it by fax with her signature if she would agree to its terms. She did. It was the smart thing to do. The next morning she was at Kinko's Copy before they opened. A fax confirmation never felt so good.

Disclaimer (te he he):
Now, FJ in no way wants to convey that there was any discorrrrd with her former employer; it was simply her time to move on. Her steps were already ordered. She welcomed the opportunity for change and is a better (much more centered) person because of it. Woo-sahhhh!

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined. author unknown