Doing The Ostrich

I just talked to DH, and it seems that there is yet another shake-up where he works. It shouldn't affect him, as he's a contractor, and his contract is fully funded through January, but still it's always scary when anything like this happens. Word is, their manager on the client side put in his resignation in disgust after whatever meeting was held this morning. Before this, there had been money promised to them for the new year, etc etc etc, but now, who knows. Luckily, there are other contracts he can be moved to if need be, but still.

I would say that there's a good 5% of me that is devoted solely to worrying about just this issue on a 24hr basis. Since I stay at home, we all depend on his salary and benefits, plus we took out a loan against his 401k last year to pay off a lot of our credit card debt; if he lost his job, not only would we lose income, but we would also be required to pay off the entire loan within a month. Like THAT could happen. Hello, you take out a loan because you don't have money in the FIRST PLACE. Sigh.

I know of several people who are in much more nerve-wracking situations than I am, too. One of our friends works for Verizon, which just announced that they're cutting 30% of their workforce across the board in the next three weeks. I'm torn as to how to feel about the company announcing that. I mean, on the one hand, it would be good to have time to look for another job, but on the other, that's three weeks of worry for the 70% of people that it will not affect. When I worked, our company did things like that, and on fact the round of layoffs that I eventually volunteered to be a part of took months longer than it was supposed to, meaning that we were told initially that we'd be out of work by June 1, but really it wasn't until mid-August that we were finally let go. Even then, they pretended to keep it all hush-hush, like some kind of game; you're gonna be laid off, but who knows when? Spin the wheel! It was horrible, waiting for the other shoe to drop, even though I knew I wasn't going to be working after The End.

I have to admit to not generally letting myself worry too much about the economy. We don't have stocks, except in DH's 401k, and we're not planning on moving anytime soon, so we don't really care what the house is worth. I understand that these things can be far-reaching, but I don't see how my worrying about them will help. I'll vote, and hopefully that will do some good. Other than that, 90% of the population is pretty helpless. However, the last few days have been somewhat unsettling, and I'm beginning to be concerned that the good folks over at NPR are going to blow a gasket if they have to report any more upheaval.

For now, I'm going to go back to doing my favorite new move - The Ostrich. It's basically comprised of sticking my head under my blanket with a book light and reading mindless crap until things blow over.