Wanted: A Rich Sugar Daddy or a Winning Lottery Ticket

I am really struggling lately with the desire to work. This doesn't mean that I want to sit on my lazy butt all day and do nothing. It just simply means that I don't really care to be employed anymore... at least not at my particular job. My colleague LOVES, LOVES, LOVES his job and can't wait to get to work in the morning. I don't get this. I don't find our job particularly fulfilling. And as for being eager to get to work in the morning... I wait until the last possible minute to get out of bed and start getting ready. I know that if I don't leave the house by a certain time I run the risk of not getting parking at the BART station. And most mornings when I do leave on time I'm hoping for a full parking lot earlier than normal or major delays either on the freeway or on BART. How sad is that?

A big part of my waining desire for a career is the uncertainty of whether or not I will be employed in a month and what my current job responsibilities are. We are in the middle of a corporate merger, I being an employee of the stronger company who bought out the weaker company. So you'd think I would have job security, right? Wrong. The powers that be are having to merge 2 very large companies, similar in size and function. So many of the jobs are duplicated. My department is still trying to figure out how many full time positions it will have now that we have merged. For budget reasons, and for functionality reasons (meaning we don't need that many people to do what we do), we won't be able to keep everyone from both companies.

First they had to decide who would be the director of our department. Well, you'd think they'd keep the current director (my boss) since he has been doing the job for several years and works for the surviving company. Nope. They "displaced" him. He found out the day before his prostate cancer surgery that upon his return from surgery he would have to interview for his own job. Ten days after his surgery (he did not take medical leave) he returned to work and interviewed for his job only to find out 2 weeks later that they would be letting him go.

Now I wait. Wait for my new boss to decide who she's going to keep on her new team. I've already had to send her my resume. She was out here (she and her entire team are located on the other side of the country!!!) to meet me and I basically had a job interview with her as she went over my resume and proceeded to tell me that she has 2 people on her team that do what I do for her. Nice. So does that mean she doesn't need me? Why keep me, someone whom she doesn't know when she can keep people she's worked with for several years? The only thing I have in my corner right now is that I am the only one on the West Coast that can do my job. That is unless she has someone who is willing to relocate.

But now I'm faced with the question, do I want to work for the "new team"? I need a job. This economy is not a good one to be out of work. I could go back to school, but in what? I have so many interests how do I pick one? I feel like an 18 year old again trying to decide what to major in in college. The only difference is it's a masters degree that I'm trying to decide and I'm almost twice the age of an 18 year old. I almost wish I would get laid off so I wouldn't have to make that decision. And even if I do get hired for the new team, I still plan on going back to school in the near future (as soon as I decide what to study). So how fair is that to someone on my team who will get laid off? How fair would it be for me to stay and my colleague who LOVES, LOVES, LOVES his job to be let go? It would be different if I want to make a career out of this and stay in this field, but it doesn't excite me. I'm good at it, but I don't necessarily enjoy it. I don't hate it, but I don't really care about it either.

If only I could find a rich sugar daddy or a winning lottery ticket, then all my financial worries would be taken care of and I could take the time to find out what it is that I would truly enjoy doing for a living.