The Last Hour

I’m looking at my watch and it’s 5:00AM. I’ve been at work since 4:00 yesterday afternoon. Everything is humming along as it should now and I can finally relax for the last hour before I can head out the door and go to my hotel for some much needed rest.

I’m in Fishkill, NY this week, working out of my company’s office at one of IBM’s semiconductor plants. Unfortunately, my work this week is all at night, usually between 6:00PM and 6:00AM. Needless to say, I’m very tired. There are a lot of folks here who have been working the night shift for years. I have no idea how they do it. I’m simply not made to work that kind of schedule.

Regardless of my difficulties with working at night this week, I am very thankful to be working. Many of you know the plant I was working out of in Richmond closed a few weeks ago. The consequences of that closing including the closing of our company’s office at that site and shipping all of our parts and equipment back to our factory. Since that time, I have been sort of an engineer-at-large, working on some projects from home and doing a lot of travelling to some of our other field offices.

In these recent economic times, many of my friends and coworkers have been let go and are having extreme difficulty finding work elsewhere. Seeing long-time employees of my company get laid off has been hard, and I see myself in a tough situation with no real place to call home right now. I’m not the only one in this situation either. Some other folks in my company have seen their sites close and are also floating around, waiting. For me, being in NY right now is a good thing. And I am being utilized which is a very good thing. However, these trips are only temporary. We are going to continue going around and around for a while like this, but nobody knows for how long. I am just hoping that when the music stops, I won’t be without a chair.

I’m still not all that worried about what the future holds. I firmly believe that whatever comes, it’s going to be great, one way or another. Life really is too short to go around making yourself sick over what might happen. We’ve chosen to be optimistic. We are still hoping to stay in Richmond and I’ve started to shake a couple of trees to see what might turn up to allow us to stay. However, we have also started to prepare for having to relocate with my work. So, you’ll get to hear all about our painting and remodeling projects to get our house ready to sell, just in case.

I’ll be sure to keep you informed as this all unfolds. However, I think I have blogged about this more than enough lately and haven’t really had anything new to say about it. Right now, we’re good. Really good. But man, am I tired…..