One year ago yesterday...

...I lost my job.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

It's been a long, rough year since then. I never imagined that I would someday find myself collecting Unemployment, but in fact I did, for quite a long while. I always somehow thought there were other, comparable jobs in this area that I could step into with relative ease...but there aren't. Things on the outside world are a lot harder and scarier than I would have believed.

It wasn't just me, of course. A lot of people lost their jobs at my company on February 27, 2007. Besides me, four other people from my department (which had had 13 employees, down from a high of about 20 in our heyday in 2001 or thereabouts) also were informed that their services would no longer be needed.

Two of us eventually went back to work at the company in other positions, for considerably less pay. Two others have found jobs outside the company. The fifth, I believe, has decided to take the opportunity to be a full-time grandmother, though I don't know exactly what she is up to right now.

It's hard. The company lost a lot of talent a year ago, and a vast amount of goodwill and employee loyalty. And those of us who have been forced to take jobs that pay less than we were earning back then - 1/3 less, in my case - are facing at the very least financial hardship in the form of greatly reduced discretionary income, the spreading-around money that goes into savings or, as is more often the case, is pumped back into the economy. And when less money is being saved and less money is being spent, the economy as a whole suffers.

(I almost completely forgot about this anniversary until a friend reminded me of it. My current job involves day-after data analysis for our facility, so I tend to be living one day in the past. But, honestly, today I would have remembered it. Besides, another post topic came up yesterday.)


Enough of this glum stuff! Time to jump on the bandwagon for something I've known about for a while. Last Friday, Michelle from mhryvnak.net/blog/ sent me this message:

mhryvnak (6:53:28 PM): i think you'd like this
mhryvnak (6:53:30 PM): http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
mhryvnak (6:53:35 PM): i got it off of a fellow blogger
DataBoy Echo (7:12:55 PM): Oh MY GOD! That's brilliant! Who would've thought that Garfield was the strip's lone anchor to sanity?
mhryvnak (7:16:57 PM): lol
mhryvnak (7:17:06 PM): i knew of all people you'd appreciate it
DataBoy Echo (7:17:49 PM): I have to pass that on to the Comics Curmudgeon crowd! Can I credit you, and post your blog address?
mhryvnak (7:18:06 PM): if you want, but really i grabbed it from loafe.com

So pass it on I did.

Harold, Christian Single und die Rheintöchter says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I just got this from a friend, and a Google site search suggests that it hasn’t been mentioned here before…

What do you get when you remove Garfield from Garfield? You get the site Garfield Minus Garfield!

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

“Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?”

It’s a lot scary to think that Garfield is this strip’s main anchor to reality!

This past Tuesday, Josh at The Comics Curmudgeon featured the Garfield Minus Garfield site in a blog post. That same day Francesco Marciuliano, writer of the comic strip Sally Forth, also featured the site on his blog and put his own spin on it: Sally Forth Minus Sally Forth. And today Bill at Bill's Notes posted about the site, which he heard about from here.

This thing, as they say, has legs - a phrase which has nothing to do with walking and everything to do with hard liquor. But that is a post for another time. For now, just kick back and enjoy Garfield Minus Garfield. And thanks for letting me know about it, Michelle!