Middle class middle
aged
Middle of the road
Mister wonder what
they did
To you
All right. Hey. Way to
start off a rambling, introspective piece about near unemployment and life
changes, quoting your own sophomoric 20 year old song, written when
you thought you were middle aged but were clearly still just a kid. My head
must be in darker places than I thought.
Let me try this again.
"I am the last of a
dying breed," he intones with the gravitas of John Hillerman. (That's the guy from Magnum PI. The one with the mustache. No, the other one with the mustache. The short one. The one who didn't drive the Ferrari. In fact, it was really quite rude of you to not recognize Mr. Hillerman and interrupt the flow. In fact, fuck you.)
(Despite your obvious rudeness, Mr. Hillerman has consented to continue.)
"I am the passenger pigeon."
No, that’s too
easy.
"I am the dusky seaside
sparrow." (Thanks to my friend Oen Kennedy for that reference.) Better.
Or let's call Captain Obvious. "I am the dinosaur." Yeah,
that’s good, as it aptly connotes my atrophied desiccated software
engineering skills. Plus, if someone says "run it down for me from the
top," I can say "well, first, the Earth cooled. Then the dinosaurs
came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and turned into oil."
(Sorry. When in doubt, quote Stephen Stucker from Airplane. And
Leon’s getting larger…)
Oh, hell, let's just cut to the meat of it and use the dodo. Because some days, that’s how I feel. Not only
extinct, but so slow moving that the extinction was as plainly predictable as a tornado tearing through a trailer park in Tulsa. And with a
stupid name. Kind of ugly, too. Yeah, dodo's good.
In 1984, when Maire
Anne and I moved back from Austin and got married, I needed a job. Much of the
software engineering work at the time was strategic defense related (what was
then quaintly called “Star Wars”), and I didn’t want to do that. Back when
people advertised for workers in the newspaper, I answered an ad in The
Boston Globe for an interesting sounding position having to do with
detection of unexploded ordnance (dud bombs) on formerly-used military
properties. The Newton-based company was small and privately held. The commute
from my mother’s house where Maire Anne and I were living in Brighton was only
about 5 ½ miles. I was interviewed at 7pm on a Friday evening by two guys,
one of whom is my good friend Jon with whom Maire Anne and I have been in and
out of bands ever since. I was the only one wearing a coat and tie. They offered me a
beer. I declined. About ten minutes later, I reversed that overly conservative
decision.
Nearly 30 years later,
it is the job I still have. Over the years, I went from being one of a staff of
software engineers, to senior software engineer, to systems engineer, to
project manager, to program manager. I’d identify the opportunity, market the
customer, write the proposal, manage all technical and financial aspects of the
project, write much of the software myself, go into
the field with the equipment, acquire the data, process the data, and write the
final report. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Then, in 2005, the
company, which had grown from start-up to attractive takeover target, was
bought by a ginormous $11b/year corporation. It wasn’t all bad – they
took us on with our seniority, so I was still accruing 4 weeks vacation a year,
and they largely left me alone as long as I was winning contracts. I don’t want
to badmouth a company for whom I still technically work (more on that in a
moment), but the transition from a privately-held company where loyalty was
highly valued (many people working for privately-held companies say “it’s a
dysfunctional family but it’s our family”) to a publicly
traded company where everything is sacrificed at the altar of shareholder value
has been an education. Actually, let me rephrase that – in a publically traded
corporation, everything is sacrificed at the altar of a group of
people’s perception of shareholder value. That’s a very different
thing. But I digress.
I was, as many
professionals are, a workaholic. Dedicated. Driven. All that preparation. All
that tweaking. All that travel. All that modifying equipment to do what I and I
alone understood needed to be done. All that data processing in the hotel room
until my eyeballs bled and my consciousness wavered like a top running out of angular momentum. All that software written out of thin air to make
something that didn’t work as advertised bend to my iron will. All that
proposal writing while on vacation. And always available. Hyper-responsive to
every e-mail and phone call.
And then, about three
years ago, it all started to go away. My proposal hit rate dropped as the
funding agency’s priorities changed. Plus, you no longer need someone with my
expertise to do a geophysical survey for ordnance; it’s closer to plug-and-play
with commercially-available hardware and software.
When this first jolt
hit, I was positively apoplectic with stress, as two of my kids were still in
college. I did what engineers do: I looked at data. I made a spreadsheet of all
of our assets – equity in the house, 401k, mutual funds, cash, cars, and
guitars – and groked the number. It was a good number. It was a stress-reducing
number. My mother and sister still own the house in Brighton where Maire Anne
and I lived for nine years. I thought, what’s the absolute worst that could
happen? I never work again. We sell the house in Newton, cash out a boatload of
equity, and move back into the third floor of my mother’s house. We’d be in a
situation many American families would kill for. And “I’ll never work again” is
overly melodramatic. It’s more a question of to what degree I can preserve my
inflated salary. I have other income from writing. And Maire Anne works. We’ll
be okay, I thought. I not only thought -- I believed. I had data.
So, as my rational mind said as it strong-armed my lizard brain, what the fuck are you afraid of?
And right then and
there, just like that, I looked the beast in the face, and let go of the fear. As Oat Willie says, onward, through the fog.
I developed a
strategic plan: Stay at the company, take whatever portion of my salary was
available for as long as I possibly could, and ride that ship all the way down
into the water. Because once I left, I would likely never see this salary
again. Plus, if they laid me off, I might get some small severance package.
Besides, I assured myself I’d be smart enough to see it coming and plan my
exit, paving the way with a networked path of resumes.
Fortunately, although my projects
dried up, there was some amount of related work within the company. Although I
wasn’t in control – I wasn’t the project manager – I was glad for the
chargeable work, and executed it with the same professional zeal as I did for
my own projects. The work was episodic. When I didn’t have enough to
cover myself, I’d either charge vacation or Leave of Absence Without Pay
(LOWP), with a commensurate decrease in my paycheck.
But the gaps in
coverage turned out to be a godsend, because without them, I never would’ve
gotten my book Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic written.
Through 2013, I
averaged about four chargeable work days a week. But as we came into 2014,
available chargeable time dropped precipitously. There was no memo that said
“okay, we only have three days a week for you... nope, two... whoops, sorry, one." It was
always on the basis of short-term project needs. But counting up the hours on
the pay stubs from 2014, I’ve averaged only 12 chargeable hours a week this
year.
Now, at a professional
engineer’s income, even partial salary ain’t chump change. At three days a
week, the family was still financially comfortable, and I was still able to
indulge my extended adolescence and buy cars and whatever parts they required.
At two days a week, there seemed to be rough financial equilibrium if I wasn’t
spending too heavily on a project. But at one day a week, there is a net
outflow of money from the family. We began to hit savings. To offset this, I
begin to fix other people’s BMW 2002s for money, despite five chapters in my
own book titled “Why I Don’t Work On Other People’s Cars (parts 1 through 5).”
And then Aaron went
back to college (he said with aplomb similar to the statement “the H-bomb
produced a bigger fireball than the A-bomb”).
Even with this massive
reduction in hours, I was still regarding the job professionally – carrying the
Blackberry and being hyper-responsive to every e-mail and phone call. To be
clear, I’m neither a saint nor a hayseed that fell off the back of the turnip
truck. Even when I'm only working a day or two a week, the company has
continued to provide me my benefit package, including health insurance. We’ve
both had a vested interest in having this continue.
And then… my
chargeable work dropped from one day a week to zero. I charged my remaining
vacation time, but working only a day a week, you don’t accrue much. At some
point in mid-September, after nearly 30 years, I stopped earning any money from
the company (though they’re still paying my benefits, I assume because they
understand my indispensability for one remaining geophysical survey).
Boy, I’m here to tell
you, there’s nothing to cure you of your 30 year workaholic tendencies like
ceasing to pay you.
And then… the
remaining survey was rescheduled. Again. For November. No, January. Wait. No.
November. Maybe. No promises.
Zero work. Zero
income. For an indeterminate amount of time. The plan may have been to ride the ship all the way down into the water, but the waves are a-lappin' at the gunnels.
So much for being able
to see the end coming and fine-tune my departure with the timing of Joseph P.
Kennedy getting out of the stock market.
I haven’t been the
proverbial frog in the water whose temperature is being slowly turned up and he doesn't know to jump out. I’ve
been a fish in a bowl whose water has been slowly removed, and now it’s gone,
and I wonder why I can’t breathe.
The funny thing is
that, in a few weeks, I'll reach my actual 30th anniversary in this position. I
want to call up Alanis Morisette and say "this is ironic. Rain
on your wedding day -- that's just bad luck." And if someone I don't know
shows up at my house with a 30 year plaque and one of those sheet cakes from
Shaws and says "the company wants to thank you for your service," I swear I won't be responsible for my actions.
There’s old-school
advice from your father’s era about having six months salary in the bank for
your “gentleman, I resign fund.” That way, when you’re at the big meeting, and
it’s not going the way you like, you can push your chair back from the table,
slowly and dramatically stand up, say “gentleman, I resign,” and walk away
from the table, leaving a concerned mumbling mass of men in blue seersucker
suits to clean up the wreckage in the aftermath of their bad management that
resulted in your highly ethical though slightly smug departure.
As much as I would
like to do this, I can’t, because:
1) Everyone I worked
with has left,
2) I attend no big
meetings (when I work, I work from home), and
3) I don’t have a
table.
If this final survey
is indeed rescheduled for early November, I can fart around with cars for a few
weeks, then do the survey, get the last of my full 40 hours a week salary for a
couple of weeks, and then, to use that time-worn aphorism that’s no longer cute
for a 56 year old, decide what I want to be when I grow up.
Like that’ll ever
happen.
But wait. Into this
mix steps someone I know from the automotive world who offers me a job. It’s
not close to my full engineering salary, but at 12 hours a week, I haven’t been making close to my full engineering
salary; it’s a damned sight better than I’ve been getting. It’s a chance to be
a Full Time Car Guy, which clearly deserves case capitalization.
So it’s all good. I’m
fine. Really.
Except that I feel
like I’m a watch spring that’s been in a period of slow unwinding. Before it
gets wound back up again.
And so, I look back at
the past year, where my pay stubs tell me I’ve averaged only 12 hours a week.
And it’s gotten me thinking…
WHAT THE HELL HAVE I
BEEN DOING WITH ALL THIS TIME?
Oh. Writing my book.
Right.
That would make me
feel better. If it was true. Unfortunately, it’s not. The book was published
last year, not this year.
My mother tells me
that, when my grandfather retired, my grandmother told him “I married you for
better or worse, but not for lunch.” Maire Anne, however, has assured me she
likes having me around (since I’d been working from home, I’ve been around
anyway). But there are only so many sleep-late mornings and long showers one
can take. There are only so many times I can convince Maire Anne to come back
to bed with me. She
loves it when I come to Costco with her, but… really, what did I do with all
this free time?
I can certainly point
to isolated things. I rebuilt the engine in my ’72 2002tii and drove it to a
2002 event in Arkansas and back. I bought a ‘72 Bavaria, got it running, and
drove it to an event in Winston-Salem and back. I covered SharkFest for
Bimmer Magazine, flying down and writing the article. I did a whole variety of
mechanical projects on my other cars. (No, I haven't done anything with the Lotus. Don't talk to me about the Lotus. The Lotus is going to be the death of me.) I've banged out my bi-monthly Road & Track article, my bi-monthly Roundel column, and my weekly Roundel Online piece. And, yes, I worked on other people’s cars for money. So I did stuff. Lots
of stuff. Honestly, I'm not sure why I'm defensive about it. But, still, it’s hard to see where all the time went.
My best conclusion is
that if I averaged 12 hours a week working, I spent perhaps eight hours a week
working on cars, ten hours incessantly searching Craigslist, and the other ten
on Facebook. I joke, but that’s not far from the truth. I can easily blow half
the day on Searchtempest following fantasies of buying a 2002 on the other side
of the country and nursing it home, then posting candidate cars on Facebook and
delighting in the fact that people I’ve never met are offering to ride shotgun
or put me up and ply me with craft beer if I come through Akron. Seriously, I should put together an article where I do a road trip consisting of nothing but taking up all these lovely people on their offers.
In reaction to the forces buffeting me about, I did the only rational thing a man can do. I bought a
trove of new and used vintage BMW parts from a closing restoration shop. Two full Suburbans worth. 12 bumpers, five fenders, two noses, grilles, tail lights, more. A few small high-value pieces
sold quickly, allowing me to more than cover my costs, but the rest has been an
enormous time sink of dubious value. So why did I do it? In the end, it was
obvious that it was a wonderful, glorious, classic, crystal-clear case of displacement
behavior -- doing this instead of dealing with larger issues. I felt that I had
little control over my employment or my future, but I could decide which parts
I put on eBay and how I packed and shipped everything. It was oddly soothing.
There are many days
when I try and keep my options open, waiting for possibilities to unfold a
certain way. No sense in driving into Boston to pick up parts at Herb Chambers
if that guy in Worcester is going to call me about those Recaros, right? Just
trying to be efficient with, uh, all this time. While I’m waiting, maybe I’ll
check Craigslist in Tampa one more time for that elusive ’63 Rambler. After
all, my friend Al lives there; I could crash on his sofa while I sort out the
vacuum-actuated windshield wipers. Makes sense, right?
I realize that this
is a glaringly obvious microcosm of a larger issue. My ex-colleague Roy tells me that,
when we worked together, I had this tendency to want to keep all options open,
or as many open for as long as possible. Professionally, I got a lot of mileage out of this. Who wouldn't want options? But Roy
got me to see that, in fact, after a certain point, it became a problem.
Options have to function correctly for them to be viable. And they have a cost in terms of operation and maintenance. At some point,
you may need to close some of them off and concentrate on fewer things to make them actually work. And life imitates engineering.
I haven't committed yet to taking the Full Time Car Guy job. What's holding me back? Well, there are logistical issues, transition of health insurance and so forth, and there's the pay cut (which, as I said, is bigger on paper than in reality), but much of it has to do with my hesitancy to close off options in my "I'm not quite dead" engineering job. I realize this is slow death, but I'm finding it difficult to play my "gentleman, I resign" card. In Machiavelli's The Prince, he says "a prince can escape short-term danger through neutrality, but at the cost of long-term grief. Instead, a prince should boldly declare his support for one side." I may be the king of bumpers, but I guess I'm not a prince.
Similarly, there’s
the famous story, alternately attributed to Caesar, Tariq, and Cortes, of the
general who, upon landing his army in hostile territory, ordered the ships
burned to cut off the possibility of retreat and ensure that the only path was
forward.
I don’t want to burn
the ships.
But at the same time, I've sailed a long way without a map, and I’m looking back over the wide expanse of
ocean I just crossed, and thinking… you know, I’m really not a boat guy. Those waves made
me sick. I mean, we evolved lungs and feet to get away from the heaving sea. I’ve landed. Somewhere. This dry
land feels secure. You can't beat Terra firma. Yeah. This is good. Let’s walk over the next rise. Wonder where we are?
Oh fuck. This is
Mauritius. Where the dodos were all clubbed to death.
(copyright 2014, Rob
Siegel, all rights reserved)
