The beginning of the beginning: Part 1

Just a little over six months ago I was laid off from a consulting firm. I was the only one in the company who had my skill set and the company could have parlayed my experience, my knowledge and my connections into a profit generating center. Instead, they had presidents and vice presidents and senior level managers jetting all over the country, from one conference to another, trying to sell themselves and a technology they neither understood nor actually had the capability to produce. Instead of sending me and the only other person in the company with the intellectual capacity to create and market this service, they made promise after promise to large and small government agencies. As I repeatedly told them, when they sit across the table from these potential clients it would be obvious to said clients that these numb nuts were full of shit and they'd never get a job. And as you probably already guessed, they never got a job and I got laid off.

They gave me two-days notice, no severance pay and cut-off my medical benefits. Are you kiddin' me? What a bunch of assholes! At first I was extremely bitter. I wrote scurrilous blogs on MySpace about the management. In one I referred to them as rat kings. Do you know what a rat king is? Oh, it's freakin' disgusting! And my anger and resentment just flowed from there. Somehow they found out and let me know. You know, I honestly didn't care at the time. But after I got over it, I thought it wasn't the way I wanted to portray myself, so I took it down. Not because I gave a rat's ass about how they felt about it...let's be perfectly clear about that.

My whole world just fell apart. I was making $75,000 a year. I had bills. Even more importantly, I have a young son. Now I had no way to help his mother support him. I couldn't afford to provide medical insurance. It was a scary time. I kept thinking, "What if something happens to him or me? Eventually something did happen to him.

He was playing with the neighbor kids; running down the street with a kid following closely behind on a bicycle. He fell and the kid ran over him. Oh my God! The screaming and crying made the hair stand up on the back of my neck! Then I calmed down and checked on him. ;) Just kiddin'. But he did scream and cry and was black and blue all over with a scattered road rash to add a splash of color. He had tire tread marks across his wrist and down his leg. Thankfully nothing was broken. This was the beginning of the beginning for me and the rest of my life.