This is the start of a wonderfully weird period of my life. The company I've worked at for the past 22 years was finally bought a few weeks ago, and Friday I found out that "there is not a place for me in the new organization". →[More:] For the past 14 years my company has been on the verge of being merged or sold, owned by a private investment company that specializes in restrructures, owned by a bank when the investment company defaulted, and we've had 7 or 8 significant downsizings and restructures before finally being bought by the industry giant. So more than anything, I was relived to finally have some closure. And really excited to finally be on the path to doing something new. The steady check and my dislike of change kept me around longer than I had liked, so the push out of the nest was just what I needed.

Today's my first day not working since I was 16, which feels really damn weird. Not bad, just weird. I seldom took vacations more than a few days since that would put me too far behind at work, so the idea of extended free time is sort of new to me. I'm taking a week or two off before fully digging in to deciding a new career and looking for a new gig. Even though I know large parts of the job hunt process are going to suck, at the moment I'm actually looking forward to it. But for now I get to clear my head a bit and do some fun stuff like cartooning, reviewing records (and prepping for my anal retentive year end list), possibly trying the NaNoWriMo for the first time, getting outside more, and spending a bit more time here and at MeFi and a few other sites I enjoy but never felt I had enough time for.