Letting It Out

I haven't mentioned it here on the blog, but the past six months have been incredibly stressful here. In mid-October my husband found out at work that his entire group was being outsourced to another country. Every single one of them was going to be laid off because their jobs were being given to people in Costa Rica who would work for much less. This is not unusual. It's happening all over our country. I think it's a travesty. No wonder our economy is tanking.

In any case, we were suddenly left with impending unemployment hanging over our heads. At least it wasn't immediately impending - the layoff wasn't going to take effect until June. Still, to announce this shortly before Thanksgiving and Christmas was pretty lousy. We've been living with a lot of uncertainty since then, not knowing where we'd be living, if we'd have an income. I'm not a big fan of change. I like a good routine. I like the familiar.

We considered moving to Idaho where my folks live and Dennis even went so far as to attend a job fair there. He had calls from at least a couple of companies afterward, but nothing real materialized. And he talked to people he knows, putting out feelers for potential jobs, trying to get a heads up on anything that might be coming along. At his current company, his status was called 're-deployment' which means he was losing his position but could try to find another elsewhere within the company. It sounds oddly military, doesn't it?

Some of you will remember when I wrote about Dennis going to Costa Rica for two weeks back in February. He was training his own replacement. Don't even get me started on that. It was supposedly a great thing, created by management to extend his group's employment. Whatever. Recently he also had his year-end performance review. It went incredibly well. He was given a promotion and a quite sizable raise. Just in time to be laid off!

In the past few weeks, he's had several interviews for jobs within the company, but even though he kept ending up among the top choices, he was never picked for an offer. This past week, he had two more. One of them called and asked if he could interview immediately. They met on Thursday and by the end of the work day, he'd been offered the job. He accepted it on Friday.

The suddenness, the sense of relief, the weight lifting from our shoulders, has been overwhelming. Now we can relax, knowing we won't have to move. We won't have to try to sell our house in an impossible real estate market. Our kids can stay near their friends and near all the things we love about this place.

I realized on Thursday night after the offer came that I had been holding my breath for the past six months. It feels great to finally let it out.