January and More Surprises

The new year was here. I was really hoping that this year was going to be so much better than last year. It seems like 2010 was the cancer year, between the diagnosis and treatment and side effects I don't think that I accomplished much of anything else that year. I had high hopes that 2011 was going to be a good year. After all I had been through I deserved to have an uneventful year. Unfortunately for me that was not going to be the case.
I returned to work on January third, this was going to be my first full week since August. The first couple of weeks back to work were normal. I did the things I usually do. I was tired, but I was getting through. We were told that we were going to have a budget meeting on January 19th. I had the first feelings of nervousness when I heard this. It was unusual to have a budget meeting that we were all required to attend. When I say all I mean my entire department. I tried not to think about it and assured myself that we were probably going to discuss ways where we could cut our budgets because sales were down. As the day got closer I began to feel more uneasy. On January 18th, the day before our meeting, I had a panic attack driving home from work. I had to pull over and get out of my car, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get back in the car and get home. After a while, I was able to get back in the car, but I was still borderline panicky. I focused my mind on getting home and I was very relieved when I finally arrived.
January 19th came and I woke up with an incredibly uneasy feeling. I tried to tell myself not to panic until I had something to actually panic about. Thank goodness I still had Xanax, I had to take one to calm myself enough to get to work. I arrived at my usual time at 7am, and tried to distract myself with work. My boss arrived at 9am and our meeting was supposed to be at 9:30am. A few minutes before the meeting was to begin someone from Human Resources came to our office. I knew that my uneasy feeling had been correct. We called in for our meeting and were told that we were laid off and that the HR person would walk us through the paperwork we needed to fill out for our severance packages. I was in shock, even though I had a feeling that this might happen, it was still shocking. I had been working for B&N for 22 years, and now it was over.

We were offered a very generous severance and we could also collect unemployment as well. I was thankful that I would have the time to find a new career. The book business was changing, with the advent of ebooks sales of actual books had been dropping. I can't blame B&N, they had to evolve with the changing industry, but because the industry was changing, I would need to find a totally different career. I packed up my stuff in my office, I had several boxes worth of papers and books etc, working in that office for 7 years, I had made it my second home. The saddest part was saying goodbye to my boss and my friends in the store.
Not having a job was a difficult thing to get used to. I had been working since I was 14 years old.  What was I going to do?