It was 2004. The Iraq war was not going well. Manhattan was still recovering from 911.
Pam and I were living in a motel room for two weeks because our new condo unit in Madison, WI, had been flooded when a cleaning woman in the unit next to us had accidentally hit a valve which set off the sprinkling system. We had saved our hand-made rug from India but needed to replace our hard-wood floors.
We had not sold our house, which had been on the market for 12 month, so we were still trying to juggle our new condo fees and mortgage as well as a bridge loan.
While working remotely from our motel room during those two weeks, I learned during a conference call from New York City that my non-profit employer in Manhattan was laying off nine employees and that I would soon learn if I would be one of them.
It was a time when I needed a massage but didn’t know who to contact because we had just relocated to Madison.
Yes, a stressful time, but, at 61, I was not in complete despair. Just tired. And I had contingency plans.
But things did work out. The wood floors got fixed in short order, and we moved back into our condo. We changed realtors, sold the house two months later and paid off the bridge loan.
I was one of three employees retained in the layoff and voluntarily took a substantial salary cut along the way so I could work for the non-profit from my home office (telecommute) for seven more years until I was 68.
And I found an excellent massage therapist who came to our condo for massages every two weeks to keep me in shape during my seventh decade of life.
* When has a stressful time in your life eventually taken you to a time of peace?
It was 2004. The Iraq war was not going well. Manhattan was still recovering from 911.
Pam and I were living in a motel room for two weeks because our new condo unit in Madison, WI, had been flooded when a cleaning woman in the unit next to us had accidentally hit a valve which set off the sprinkling system. We had saved our hand-made rug from India but needed to replace our hard-wood floors.
We had not sold our house, which had been on the market for 12 month, so we were still trying to juggle our new condo fees and mortgage as well as a bridge loan.
While working remotely from our motel room during those two weeks, I learned during a conference call from New York City that my non-profit employer in Manhattan was laying off nine employees and that I would soon learn if I would be one of them.
It was a time when I needed a massage but didn’t know who to contact because we had just relocated to Madison.
Yes, a stressful time, but, at 61, I was not in complete despair. Just tired. And I had contingency plans.
But things did work out. The wood floors got fixed in short order, and we moved back into our condo. We changed realtors, sold the house two months later and paid off the bridge loan.
I was one of three employees retained in the layoff and voluntarily took a substantial salary cut along the way so I could work for the non-profit from my home office (telecommute) for seven more years until I was 68.
And I found an excellent massage therapist who came to our condo for massages every two weeks to keep me in shape during my seventh decade of life.
* When has a stressful time in your life eventually taken you to a time of peace?