Kevin has just been unleashed onto the job market.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. In a way I'm surprised it took this long; when the question came up today, I actually couldn't remember ever having been laid off before. Heck, during the Bowstreet days alone there were at least half a dozen times I was ready for the hammer to fall, but amazingly it never did.

What actually stings the most is that this is the job I've wanted my whole career--well, at least the IT job I've wanted my whole IT career. Work with Spoon, live in Alaska, develop with and teach Portlet Factory and Notes/Domino...add in to that the small-business environment with really fantastic people and the promise of plentiful work even in a tight economy (due to the recognized depth of expertise of the team), and it was literally the best and last IT job I wanted to have. The plan was to ride that horse until I just got sick of IT altogether and found a way to teach music theory, critical thinking, riflecraft--you know, the really important subjects. :-)

I certainly don't fault Davalen in this; in the same position I'd have made the same choice. With all the meddling the self-anointed brainiacs have done to the economy over the past several generations, what other outcome did any of us expect? I suspect that the exact timing and degree of impact may have been a bit surprising, but again, it was bound to happen sooner or later. If it just could have been a different job...why this one?

And so again it is time to do what I do worst: sell myself. Gah.

With this last year's move, and job change, and baby, one of the things that we joked about is that we apparently like to do things the hard way. Ah, the irony. So now, with the greatest little motivator that I could ever have wished for to spur me on, I suppose it is a chance to see what I'm really made of.