Back in June 2016, I was laid off and my official last day was July 1, 2016.
When I found out, I was relieved and worried to some extent, as I believe I wrote here when it happened.
Since then, I had both knees successfully replaced, started receiving unemployment, and have been faithfully looking for another job.
I have only doubted and been angry with the Lord on a few occasions. Mostly these were driven by pain and response to Ellie's anxiety directed towards me.
From the time I was laid off until now, I haven't really doubted that we would ever go hungry, be late on bills or have other problems.
Just before Christmas, I applied for a job that I received as an email alert through a popular job site. The next day, I received a phone call asking if I was available for an interview. I said yes, and I was told it may happen that afternoon!
The interview wound up taking place after Christmas. The official job offer was pretty close to what I was making. About $7k short of what I was making, which was a LOT of money. This still, is a LOT of money.
Due to the nature of the job, I needed to get government/military security clearance. All of the initial paperwork took me an entire day+ to fill out, sign, fax, scan and email back to my new employer for preparing the clearance process.
The usual drug screening required for this took place, and I had to provide pictures of my Rx bottle(s) to validate some of the pain medications in my system.
Everything there cleared.
Then I had to fill out MORE paperwork, and then go through another security clearance process to get it directly authorized by the agency I am going to work for.
Again, everything there cleared.
I start work this week at home filling out forms. Due to MLK day, I will work on location on Tuesday.
While many others were worried that I wasn't going to find employment, I wasn't fearful.
I was worried and concerned, but I wasn't afraid.
My biggest concern was that I might need to apply for disability sooner than later, because my medication might cause some employers to forgo the validation process.
Going even further with the latency of employment, many of the employers I met with either didn't want to meet my desired salary range, didn't like that I wasn't as "certified" JAVA developer (The language is a C language and it's damn easy to read... so WTF?)....
AND...
I ran into an old coworker that I trained many years earlier, who told me that he had been laid off as had another large group of people too.
Our local market place is flooded by people in my industry.
My new job isn't in software development, however, it is in a technical support type of role....
BUT...
It's the organization that I am contracted to work with that makes me proud to accept the lower pay... which is actually higher than the pay I was willing to accept.
It should be good!
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