Today I am a Whiner

And damn proud of it, too.

You see, I was supposed to be an a plane this morning, on my way to the Annual Conclave of Le Grand Orange. But fate stood in the way, in the form of an e-mail last Thursday from the head of my department, announcing a full staff meeting for Tuesday the 15th, attendance is mandatory.

Now, I've been pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop for the last three years, ever since the LAST bloodbath in my department. So I knew immediately that the Titanic had hit the iceberg and that there were nowhere near enough lifeboats for everyone. Through some rather oblique e-mail exchanges with the Powers that Be, trying to ascertain whether anything was going to be said at this meeting that might, say, cause one to think twice about spending $768 plus meals on a blogger conference, I received little enough of an answer that I knew the writing was on the wall. And so, when the meeting actually took place yesterday, I was well-prepared.

Many years ago, when I was still doing secretarial/administrative work, a headhunter told me that you should always update your resume three months into a new job, and every six months thereafter -- just so you're ready, and also because it's easy to forget what you've accomplished over a long period of time.

And 7-1/2 years is a long period of time.

So my resume has been more-or-less ready for the last three years, and my Spidey-sense served me in good stead yesterday, enabling me to deal with the news without falling completely apart.

I'm actually kind of surprised at how relatively calm I am. I think it must be the yoga.

There really isn't anyone at whom to lash out, either. When you work on research grants, and the grants aren't there, there's that much less money to pay people. If I'm angry at anything, it's the relentless cost-of-living increases that we've received almost every year -- two of them this year alone. Each time they announced one, I've been more scared, because every raise makes me more expensive to keep on in a time of limited funds. In a six-person system development group, three of us got the axe, one of whom has been with the place about a decade longer than I have. But aside from that person, the cuts in my group were clearly made on seniority -- and despite the fact that 7-1/2 years is a long time in IT, it's a mere blip in my department.

And so, as of August 30, I will be a middle-aged unemployed person in George W. Bush's America.

And that's where YOU come in, fair readers.

Because I need work.

What kind of work? Well, there's the dilemma. Because I'm not strictly a web programmer, not strictly a designer, not strictly a copywriter, not strictly a technical writer, not strictly a desktop support rep, not strictly a trainer -- and yet I've done all of these and more. What I need to find is a company that needs a nimble IT generalist who can handle just about anything thrown at me. You use a programming language in which I don't have experience? Let me run over to Barnes and Noble and pick up a book -- I'll at least have a passing familiarity between the time I give notice and the time I start with you. I have never had experience in the languages used at any of the IT jobs I've had, including my first one, into which I moved from being the department's administrative assistant.

I'd rather not post my resume for public consumption, but if you are in the New York metropolitan area (or if you have a position in which I could telecommute), and you are looking for a -- dare I say it? -- Jill of all trades; or if you know of such a position, and you want to discuss it further, my e-mail address is shown in the right-hand sidebar.

I'm not one of those people who believes that things happen for a reason. I don't believe in some giant Boris Spassky in the sky, moving chess pieces because he has nothing better to do than to just mess with people's lives. But while I had hoped to stay put where I am till I retire, it's not going to happen. So I have to adapt or be crushed.

And I refuse to do the latter.