Laid off.

The last time I got laid off was by my brother. I was working as a snot-nosed, bleached-haired permalancer in television. Mainly just hanging around those days since we stopped production when we ran out of budget. He had to let the entire freelance staff go one day. The full-timers stayed on another week before the company shut down officially. This was in the year after 9/11 when all of the dot coms went out and the small media companies like us shortly followed.

Being laid off is kind of like being broken up with. Even if it's amicable and even if it has nothing to do with you (it's not you, it's me), even all things like that...it still hurts a bit. Like, you wanted to be the one to make the decision and instead someone else was in control.

I'm excited for my next steps. Four years of anything is a lot. This job outlasted both my long term relationships and certainly any other job I've had. The longest I was any one place before this was elementary school. And, I wasn't very happy about the seven years I had to spend in that place.

Last year, when I thought about an optimal life plan, I wanted to save up, leave work at the end of 2009, travel for a few months, start training for the marathon, and start grad school in September. Studying what, you ask? Who knows. But the plan sounded great. How funny things are when they become reality. Now that I am in this position, I have zero desire to go to school. I'd love to travel, but I don't really see myself going for a very long chunk of time. I am still going to be training, but that's my only constant.

I really like my life. I love living in Brooklyn, my friends, everything. I just want to spend more time at home, cook, write, see good people, and find interesting work to do that makes me happy. I like the idea of a flexible existence, and a transparent one where there is no divide between who I am personally and who I am when I'm working. I want to be an active participant in the creative process whether it be writing, media of some sort, art. I just want to make things and put them out there. I'm done sitting at a desk. I want to move around.

No matter who made the choice, I feel like I am now in control of my destiny.