2018 It’s Been Tough or Has It?

Well hopefully you’ve been reading some of my posts and enjoying them. In “Music – My First Escape – How it began,” I mentioned the difficult part about creating this blog is content.

You may have noticed my content is switching between my personal life history, opinions/rants and things I’ve done as well as more current things like the review of “Live and The Counting Crows at Jones Beach.” I like the idea of looking back but sharing current things so hopefully that’s working.

So with all that said I was thinking specifically about 2018 and what a year it’s been; has it been tough or not really; maybe the jury is still out?

I mean here I am on a Wednesday afternoon unemployed for only the 4th time in over 30 years so that might imply tough. Those 30+ years look like this:

• I quit my consulting gig at 25 to travel Europe which I mentioned in “I’m That Guy!“
• Fast forward, after 14+ years at the same company where things just ran their course I spent less a little over a month out of work with some time on the Night Ranger, Foreigner, Journey tour as well as visiting friends.
• Following that I took a brief 6-7 month gig. It was a joke of a company from the start but took it knowing it was brief, it paid good, and the economy sucked so people/colleagues were encouraging me. The ending was quite interesting but I followed it up 4 days later with 11 days on a ridiculous boat (not mine obviously) sailing the BVI’s and coming home to three job offers.

I took the one that wasn’t a job in my mind but an opportunity. We were building a Northeast division of a company and I was employee #1. After three years I moved on because I saw a big change in direction and a chance to work for one of my vendors that had an amazing product.

Up until a couple of months ago that’s where I was; a tech start-up that, as I said, had amazing products. Upon joining we all received stock options and were paid good salaries with great earning potential. In my 3 years there I took on a couple of different roles. The last role was something I’d never done before and ended up leading me to my most successful year, on multiple levels, ever.

The brief history is the company went public about 2 years after my arrival. People were excited since many were waiting on it and in some cases, when going public, employees become millionaires. Needless to say people were hopeful but hope wasn’t going to do much for this shit show!!

Before going public they basically screwed everyone by doing a 6 to 1 reverse stock split. They then cut the strike price causing all of the employee options to be under water. For anyone that doesn’t understand that, most employee stock was worthless, for me to buy 1 share of my options I could basically buy 2 on the open market.

That was just initially, it got much worse in time. After missing earnings the first quarter after IPO the stock was in the two dollar range. Not only did they miss earnings but they only by about 800K while doing some shady shit. This basically meant they could have easily made earnings by just being a little more shady but they couldn’t even do that right; consistent bad decision making. 

In the end, due to some of the worst management in history and their repetitive f**k ups the stock was being de-listed, they filed for bankruptcy and fired just about everyone within 13 months. 

Sounds like a mess right? We will come back to that.

The CRAZIEST part is that’s not even why 2018 was tough. In the midst of all that I had cervical spine surgery. I had been having some problems for a few years that doctors think stemmed from a car accident long ago. It became inevitable that I was going to have to have this surgery. Seeing things at my company going somewhat south, and having good benefits, the timing seemed right.

March 13th was the big day. My plan, have surgery, be on short term disability and if I find another job great but I really wanted to ride out things at my company til 2019.

Good news!! The surgery was a success (yep that’s me to the right). Next morning at NYU I was ready to rock and roll outta there. I mean I had to wear a brace but I felt ok, got dressed, put on my shoes and was ready to go. My friend Jodi was awesome enough to wait with my mother, drive me home as well as get me some stuff she thought I’d need. She totally hooked me up (food, rides, etc) through the next few weeks as well.

I took one double dose of Oxycodone to get me home after my 23 hrs in the hospital (the LIE is like a minefield) and day two walked 1.5 miles. By day four I was up to 7 miles and wasn’t doing bad outside of having to sleep in a recliner, not drive and wear that damn brace.

Of course since then I’ve had some other things happening and a lot of doctors appointments but my cervical spine is healing as expected, according to my surgeon, and I have full motion in my neck.

Trust me I have read some horror stories but for anyone going through this I’d tell you to join this facebook group.

CERVICAL DISC SURGERY ACDF A NEW LIFE SHARE YOUR STORY (USA)

They are folks that have been or are going through the same thing, they answered some of my stupid ass questions and there is tons of support, suggestions and just people helping people. Not only was it helpful but I spent a lot of time there while sitting home alone which allowed me to be less alone.

Stepping back to the job thing. I was out of work on short-term, although partially working (I shouldn’t have been), for about 8 weeks and we now had a new CEO. I had emailed him (while on disability) to welcome him aboard and he actually called to ‘meet me’. This was the CEO this company needed 2 years earlier, he was smart, communicative and didn’t realize the nightmare he stepped into. 

He seemed great was going to save this doomed company. Well, he was going to try and in doing so had weekly all-hands meetings with Q&A. People were asking all kinds of stupid questions and he tried to provide real answers. Everyone had a new energy about the fate of the company until the morning we found out he resigned.

Tons of speculation surrounded this but with some good inside info it seems the CTO/Founder screwed things up once again. I mean the employees had to learn that their savior had left via the news not even internal communication. Basically that day we were told he was gone, we would all be fired and here we are.

On a related side note I did reach out to that CEO on Linkedin. He obviously couldn’t give me details but wished me luck and basically apologized for not being able to do more. He was probably the only stand up guy that was ever an executive at Shit Show & Company.

Ok, this got long and drawn out, it wasn’t really even about my shitty company but I, like I often do, went off on a tangent.

So back to 2018 and how tough it is or isn’t.

To say it’s been a challenging year is pretty accurate. Keeping things in perspective is important so, I should say I have multiple friends who were diagnosed and fighting cancer while all I had to do was survive a surgery. Sure I still have some crap going on that I am dealing with but in my mind that’s nothing compared to them. Luckily they all received clean bills of health.

This all brings me to now. Given I changed what I did somewhat I am definitely seeing some big challenges with securing a job. I’ve honestly never had an issue getting a job and there have been offers I don’t want, in one case a job I didn’t even interview for. Bottom line is I’m hitting a roadblock(s).

For me it’s a multifaceted block because I know I can do anything if given a chance I mean here I am writing a blog and I didn’t know how to do that! Last year I took on a role I knew nothing about and crushed it, I helped build a successful company and before that I spent 14 years at a company where most were let go or fired around me. I even moved me to Asia briefly to do a project as others were being let go.

All this experience yet I don’t want to go back to what I did and honestly not really sure I want to go back to corporate america. Unfortunately I haven’t mastered the winnings of powerball, megamillions, or found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I guess I have to do something but what?

I really wish I had an answer!

The strangest thing is I don’t think, no I know, I am not in this boat alone. I have another successful friend who was texting me last night saying she wants a new job, something different, maybe even wants to move. Another friend talking about retirement when he’s far off (well not as far as me) and my previously mentioned friend Jodi wanting to change the way she works to enable her to travel more. I have a couple of other friends that are going through similar types of thing so I’m starting to wonder if it’s a generational thing.

I am totally open to anyone’s thoughts/opinions on this.

With  all my uncertainty, the insanity is I’ve had a great summer. I went to lots of shows, spent time with friends, learned more about my friendships, went out on a couple of dates (yep even unemployed losers can get dates it seems) and although I had some really down days over the last month or so feel like I am probably the healthiest I’ve been in a long time.

Hopefully, in  the next couple of weeks, I find out if I am medically just as healthy even if in pain. Then maybe I can figure out this job thing or at least how the year will end. First I need to end this rant cause my friend wants to grab drinks in town and I need to start planning a trip to Egypt.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far