This is Hello

    Hey, hi, hello. Good morning (or afternoon, I suppose.)

    I've meant to start a blog for quite a long time in my life, and I feel like today's the perfect day to start.

    I don't anticipate I'll get many readers, if any, but I also don't intend for this blog to be anything but a diary with the caveat that anyone can stumble across it at any time and read these thoughts themselves. So, I suppose, that's you. Thanks for stopping by. Posts will be sporadic, but I do intend to keep this going for as long as I'm able to.

    To summarize the situation I find myself in: As of this morning, I've been laid off from my full-time job.

    It was a job with security, wonderful benefits, phenomenal coworkers, and all from the comfort of my own home. If I'm being honest, they paid me far more than an administrative assistant likely deserves. Which, if I'm also being honest, is likely the reason that company's new owners decided to eliminate my position.

    I had the benefit of knowing ahead of time, that the layoff was coming.

    I'd been off on PTO for six days, Monday-Monday, so that I could focus my time and efforts on preparing for and then attending a local convention at which I sold my crafts in the Artist's Alley. I bothered to look at my work email the day before the con, and saw that there'd been an all-hands standup meeting in my absence. Which, as I found out, was to announce some "restructuring" and subsequent layoffs. I was able to get unofficial confirmation that my position was one of the ones being eliminated. (The company is rather small, and only newly acquired by a venture capitalist firm. Prior to this acquisition, it'd been a family-owned, employee-oriented company. A wonderful place to work, and I'll miss it dearly if not for the new owners and their usual corporate bull.)

    I clocked in this morning. I knew I'd be asked to meet with my manager and an HR rep at some point, but not when, per se. I waited in purgatory to get the invitation. Even pinged my manager and told him I'd returned from my PTO, and was ready when he was.

    They were courteous, as they usually are in these situations. With the benefit of foresight also came the benefit of being able to prepare myself, to know what to expect going into this meeting. They ripped the band-aid off swiftly and professionally, and I handled myself with as much decorum as one can expect to have when being told you're losing your source of income.

So, what now? Why this blog?
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    With the absence of a full-time job, and the salary my husband and I depend on, I've got an abundance of time on my hands. And furthermore, I'm strangely motivated to kick my life into gear and make the most of this situation.

    I've been saying for quite some time now that I want to be my own boss.

    I want to make my art my job. I want to make my own schedule. I want to be able to wake up every day knowing that, rather than clocking into the capitalist grind, I'm sitting down in my studio to create. And while that felt - and still feels - like a pipedream, I'm choosing to take this layoff as an opportunity to pursue that dream of mine.

    I'm fortunate to have a small side-gig working at a tea bistro a few towns over, and to have the wonderful opportunity to do freelance work for my favorite band as their video editor (you'll see plenty more about that throughout the life of this blog, I promise.) So I'm not left entirely without income, but it's not even remotely enough to compensate for what I'm losing.

    Where does this blog come into that grand plan, then?

    Well, to put it simply, I want to chronicle this journey. I want to take this dégringolade and see if I can't turn it into something wonderful. And you, dear reader, will come along with me on this journey!

    Maybe I'll end up settling into another mundane corporate job to make end's meet. Maybe I'll find another avenue to veer down as I go along. Or maybe, if I'm really, really lucky (because let's be honest, luck holds the most sway over things like this), I'll be that self-employed artist I want so badly to be. Time will tell, and I'm looking forward to what the future holds.

Optimistically,
- Lily Marlene