MARK’S CAFE MOI: Every fever breaks

I last wrote about being a 52 year old gay male executive assistant losing my job. I made some assumptions on that about the possibility of gender discrimination (I’m the only male assistant in the company as far as I know) and my thinking the odds weren’t good for finding another job here after ten years when my competitors are all women, most of them younger. It turns out I’m probably wrong. I have an interview Thursday and may well get the job. Sometimes I think a lifetime of soft (and sometimes hard) discrimination colors my thinking. I hope I’m wrong and that I have a few more good years with the company. Frank and I aren’t ready to move to the Jersey countryside just yet. Losing a job working for the same person for six years (I’ve only worked for two people in the decade I’ve been here) is emotional. Having the company taken over, then two years later a decisive management change that seemed brutal, left me with a kind of fever that needed time to cool. My boss will be just fine. And her boss (who I started working for in 2001) will be fine. Everyone will be just fine, including me. The fever breaks, and I’m left with a clearer head, the best kind of head with which to face the changes life brings. And decisions made from a fevered mind are most often bad decisions. What I would have done two weeks ago is not what I’ll do today. Cool down, breathe, let the clear air of a calm mind breeze into your thinking and you can choose from a place of clarity.]]>