New Year Coming Soon!

Well, in a few short weeks, it will be 2025. This year has been a busy one for myself and for my son.

My son completed his 3 third year in soccer since COVID and is now in his third year in swimming for the Sarnia Rapids. They practice at the YMCA Jerry McCaw Family Center and he is really enjoying it. He’s even taking up “working out” which his dad (me) should definitely be doing more of and keeps promising to do, but… life. He’s working on becoming taller than me and could be taller than me by the time of his next birthday if he keeps growing. This year he’s learned to be more helpful around the house and I put him to work helping build a wheelchair ramp at Grandma’s house. That earned him a brand new impact driver (his very own) since he’s helping I figured he should start getting his own tools.

I found out a few weeks ago, that my position was being “eliminated” due to changes in Organization Structure. Translations: down-sized, reduction in force (RIF), terminated, laid-off, aka given the old heave-ho! Now this is a company that I have enjoyed working for for over 7 years. I had planned on retiring from Percepta if the cards aligned, but that’s not the case. This year’s profit targets were much too lofty for the current market/climate, and we weren’t going to get our bonus this year but now I won’t have to worry about that. I certainly wasn’t alone in this, many people throughout our global team faced similar circumstances. I’m the only Canadian that I am aware of, but hundreds of others globally are also seeking new employment.

In the past I’ve been upset about being in this situation, but the truth is, I saw it coming. I was pretty sure that things would get worse before they got better, but when I had that meeting, naturally a range of emotions occurred but I’ve dealt with most of them. Now just finding a new employer at what is quite possibly the worst time of year to be looking – but there are jobs posted out there. I’m hearing very little back but have received my first few rejection/thanks but no thanks letters.

This will give me more time to work on things I’ve been meaning to do, but couldn’t because work sometimes/often got in the way. What you might ask? Well, this year, I became a real-estate investor and in order to continue down that path, I need to finish renovating my house. Currently the kitchen is under demolition and hoping before the end of the month, at least 1 bathroom will also be turning into a blank canvas.

This is a new opportunity for me to learn some more things about myself and remember that I do enjoy doing certain things. I’ve forgotten how much I used to enjoy home improvement type tasks/jobs and I get excited about it. Now it’s definitely different when you know that there is no more money coming in, but I don’t have any immediate needs – like I said, I saw this coming so I was preparing for the storm.

I hope all of you out there in the world are doing okay, I haven’t spoke to so many people in so long, but I really miss doing that.