Oh What a Year!
November 14, 2009
Today marks day 365 since being laid off by Flock. I went to bed on Thursday, November 13, 2008 thinking everything was great. I was enjoying my new job, frustrated with some thing, but overall very happy that I was out of teaching. I was doing what I loved and then the phone call came. I was expecting to discuss work issues but instead got an awkward silence followed by, “This sucks but your job was cut”. Not what I wanted to hear on a Friday morning with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s coming over the next month and a half.
To make it even better, my wife and I found out that she was pregnant with our third baby (later to revealed to be a third baby boy). So, in a weeks time I lost my job, the market was collapsing, we were losing our insurance and having another baby. That set off a crazy year of ups and downs follow by more ups and more downs. My family was supposed to come up for Christmas for the first time ever but they didn’t make the trip due to a freak snow storm that dropped 2 feet of snow on Portland. Come spring time, we were getting ready to celebrate our 10th Anniversary but the hopes we had of taking an amazing trip were now whittled down to a 3 day getaway on Orcas Island. Now, spending 3 days in a great little cottage in the Puget Sound with no kids was nice but not what we had hoped for. Either way, it was a nice little up time during what was just the beginning of our year.
With no hope of finding a decent job, I got a random email from the people at Ask.com and we began the discussion of bundling their search with my themes. This huge up turned into a nightmare down as lawyers got involved to make sure everything was ok as we proceeded. After taking a few months to finalize contract language we signed the contract and things were back up. Then, Firefox changed their policy regarding add-ons due to a battle between two extensions developers that led to the opt-in policy. This all happened right at the time we were getting ready to release our bundled themes and ultimately to the “secret update”. Things settled down but the excitement of the release turned into another extended wait as the Ask search extension had to be rebuilt to comply with the new policy. Between the originally planned release and the redo, our third little guy was born and brought the biggest up of the past year. He is a huge blessing and his little smiles and laughs bring joy during this roller coaster.
The combination of a new baby and major delays caused me to go into web hibernation and I was very bad at responding to comments and emails. (If you sent me an email and I didn’t respond, I am very sorry. I tried to get to them all but the time consuming needs of a newborn and a severe decrease in sleep made it difficult.) I finally got the rebuilt Ask search on October 28th and my first theme release happened on November 6th. I am supposed to get the rest of the needed extensions on the 18th so I can upload my updates.
A year without a job really does a wonder on your credit score, your savings accounts, and your debt owed since we have had to be very creative with our finances. At one point, my wife and I were looking for coins anywhere we could find to scrounge up $5 so we could have enough gas to get to where we needed to go. With so many people hurting financially right now, it has been an eye opening and much needed experience to know what it is like to not know how things were going to get paid. We have had amazing friends and a Church family that has blessed us beyond belief to help get us through. After losing my job, finding out about the baby, not having Christmas, hearing from Ask, legal delays, release #1, opt-in road bump, new son, major delay #2, release #2, some final hurdles and the Hell that is Godaddy.com, things are slowly turning around and moving forward since starting a 365 day journey of being unemployed.
It has been a very crazy year for us and tomorrow will start day 1 of the next year. I appreciate all the kind words and encouragement I have received from so many of you. I am very grateful to all of you who use my themes. I started out as a teacher doing something for fun 5 years ago and now I sit here trying to turn it into a way to provide for my family. Without you, none of this would be possible so thanks again.
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