Eight years ago today, my husband and I took a lovely trip to Fort Bragg. I had been under a huge amount of stress at work, and he wanted to take me away from all that for a few relaxing days. We spent lots of time just sitting and watching the ocean to give my psyche a chance to unwind a little. We also did some fun, touristy things like explore shops downtown and ride the Skunk Train.
We also didn't know on July 4, 2013, that I would be getting laid off from my incredibly stressful job in mid-August, about six weeks later, which was actually a blessing because I really didn't want to quit on my own, so getting forced out solved that problem. I had been with that company for eight years.
It wasn't long after that layoff that Anna reached out to offer me an opportunity to work at the Sacramento Bee on-call, which I gratefully accepted. I (like many others) felt honored to work for McClatchy Co.'s flagship newspaper, and I worked hard there, eventually getting promoted to permanent part-time status and then, later, full-time. I went from an on-call copy editor to a Copy Editor I and then Copy Editor II and witnessed many difficult changes as the Bee's copy desk was reduced from a staff of (if I remember correctly) over 40 people who produced not only the Sacramento Bee but also the Modesto Bee and the Merced Sun-Star and later added the Fresno Bee and the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and then was regionalized into a team called News Desk West, which added team members and more newspapers for us to work on from Washington state (with its papers the Bellingham Herald, the Olympia Olympian, the Tri-Cities Herald, and the Tacoma News-Tribune) and Idaho (the Idaho Statesman). In short order McClatchy would also regionalize its copy desk units of its Central region markets as News Desk Central and its Eastern region markets as News Desk East. This was all a leadup to the current consolidation of McClatchy's copy desk operations into a single unit headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., now referred to as the Publishing Center. After many rounds of layoffs and buyouts and downsizing/consolidating/"optimizing," the Publishing Center was comprised of about 60-ish staff members mostly working from home and scattered across every time zone of the U.S.
I had seen and also been part of many rounds of McClatchy layoffs during those years, but every time I always had some path provided to me that allowed me to return to work right away (maybe with a different department, maybe with a different supervisor, like the lovely Rita, etc., but there was always a way back in somehow, still with McClatchy).
And then we got word in March of this year that the Pub Center staff would be decimated once again as McClatchy would be outsourcing the page design tasks to a contractor called EKCS in New Delhi. Our team of about 60 would this time be cut to about 36. And this time I would be laid off with no apparent pathway to return to the team. After eight years with McClatchy my job would be coming to an end. Eight years after I was laid off from my previous job, where I also worked for eight years.
Eight years. Eight years. Eight years. It's like my working life is being carved up into these eight-year chunks. (If there's some hidden significance there, I have no idea what it is.)
I really wanted to make it to at least 10 years with McClatchy, but that doesn't look like it will happen. And I'm still more than 10 years from retirement age, so I'm going to have to find a new career path forward from here. (As of right now I have no idea what that will be, either.)
I'm mentally tired and overwhelmed by the unknown future. I feel relatively certain that things will work out in the long run, but the control freak in me doesn't like the current uncertainty. And I'm just so, so, so tired right now that I'm finding it nearly impossible to focus on looking for a new job while the countdown on my current job gradually runs out. (I think I have 29 work days left as of Wednesday, my first work day this week.)
This life transition is about the only thing that has been on my mind lately, but I try to avoid posting about it here (because if I posted about it as often as I think about it, that's all anyone would ever hear about from me … and that would get pretty darned old for all y'all pretty darned quick).
