Ctrl-alt-delete  Forced to Reboot

  I feel like I am in the front seat of one of the greatest roller coaster rides ever, which has now slowed down to a slow crawl as it has reached the top of the highest and last peak of this wild ride. Leaning forward, I can see the the drop off. It is straight down to ground level, and I realize that I can raise my arms in the air and scream with exuberance all the way down, or I can start panicking and throw-up on myself as I descend. It has been suggested by a close friend of mine, that knowing me as well as she does, I will probably do both.

 Life was going along really well. We had become very comfortable in our life, taking vacations throughout the world, enjoying weekend getaways, attending great entertainment events, and buying what we wanted when we wanted. So what I am about to share with you has been a wake up call. We are literally being forced to  'reboot'.

  A couple of weeks ago my husband received a call from his boss informing him the company was laying off 108 employees in the next two days and unfortunately he was one of them. In fact, neither his boss nor her entire department were spared. The termination was unceremonious and abrupt. There weren't even any exit interviews conducted. The term they used was "reorganizing". We had been with this company for almost 18 years and within minutes after the call it felt like we had lost our entire family.  For the next two days we had phone call after phone call from others with their own layoff news. Presidents, Vice President, Directors, Engineers, and Sales and Marketing executives were caught in the cross hairs. Some of these people had 40 yrs. with the company. Many had spent their entire working life as part of this organization. We sat in shock as the calls came in and realized our lives had just changed forever.

  The one thing in life I have learned is you cannot quit, you have to get up and move forward. For me I have gone into "emergency mode", which is to plug every financial hole or leak I can find in our budget. This included dropping such luxuries as cable and gym memberships, as well as any other non-essential services we could do without, bringing our budget down as low as we possibly can.

  There are some hidden blessings in this reboot time. For one thing, it is forcing us to look into all of our investments. We came to the realization we could change a lot of things for our retirement. We found a financial planner who has helped us greatly, a CPA that works along side us to keep us on the right path. That, I wish I had done 20 yrs. ago.

  Getting another job like my husband had will take time, months probably. So I have cried a few tears, felt sick to my stomach, and had sleepless nights. The holidays are upon us, children are coming home for Christmas, we have a son getting married next month, and yes I can scream with joy for these things, yet still feel like throwing up because of the timing of this layoff. So here's to the beginning of the ctrl-alt-delete of our lives. Literally we are rebooting our lives again.