What a funny January...

...it has been. If you had said to me at the start of January that by the end I would be unemployed, I would have laughed in your face - yet here I am...unemployed.

Thursday 7th January, 4 days back into work after Christmas and I get summoned to the office. On my way there, I was trying to rack my brains, had I done something? was it about future plans for the business? was it a pay rise? Nope...it was something that I hadn't expected in a million years...my job was being made redundant. My face was in a state of shock, comedy and confusion. How the hell was this happening? They explained that it was due to a re-structure...wait, what? Anyway, after 5 whole minutes of no explanation (really), I was told to gather my things from my desk and go home...I was now in affect on gardening leave. I had to pull my girlfriend out of work (this was 3:30 in the afternoon) and then drive home trying to contemplate what had just happened. That afternoon, evening and night was a blur of shock, hatred, anger, confusion and worry. But by the end of the weekend, my mind was completely made up...I would take the redundancy and be done.

The following week involved a couple of meetings at work which mainly consisted of me questioning what they had done, why they had done it and how much redundancy money would I actually get. And despite the answers they gave, I am still confused on the reasons and method of them making me redundant but I made it clear that I wasn't going back ...mainly because of the way it had all been done. After all, I had been there going on 16 years and moved my way through the factory getting higher and higher within so a little more respect would have gone a long way. The one thing I did get to do though was wander through the factory and say good bye to the people I had worked with for years which was actually quite emotional...although everyone was quite shocked that I wasn't applying for the other jobs within the company and seemed surprised that I was taking the redundancy and leaving.

And so, in the blink of an eye, 16 years of hard work and committed service at Sanko Gosei was over. I was virtually never off sick, never late, never took days off work for the hell of it, was always very professional, did my job to the best of my abilities and was not an arsehole. Just goes to prove that it doesn't matter how much you do and how long you have worked at a company...you are basically just a number and payroll figure. To be honest, I wasn't happy...it was a job that paid the bills and that was that and I always said I wanted to be out by the age of 40 (which is in Feb 2017) so they actually really did me a favour. Of course, the other side of that is that I actually now don't have a job!!!

I have decided to take some time out and given myself a time line target for when I need to have a steady wage coming in and in the meantime, have stepped up my writing (considerably), kept busy around the house, upped my reading, gaming and gyming. There are possibilities already at my feet with regards to jobs if I can hang on for a few months and I have made it my goal to not end up in a job like the one I was in...something different and with a bit more meaning. All in all though, this is probably the best thing to ever happen to me...I am free of Sanko Gosei and am fully determined to make it and do something I want to do.