Still sick: Yes
Children currently fighting: Almost certainly
Current topic of dispute: The sink
Today may be the most bureaucratic day of this little adventure so far.
As I watch the clock tick down on my severance offer, I’m trying to connect with employment lawyers to confirm that everything is above board with it. I honestly believe it probably is, but what do I know?
In order to verify that, I need to provide information about my income, employment letters, tax statements, and various other documentation from the past five years.
Conveniently, I never bothered to download any of that from the corporate systems. I also did not bring copies home.
So now I find myself at the mercy of Cenovus to provide those documents to me in a timely fashion.
To be clear, Cenovus as an organization has never treated me poorly, and I have no reason to believe anyone is trying to undermine my rights. Still, it is an interesting position to be in where the first step in protecting yourself involves politely asking your former employer for paperwork you probably should have downloaded years ago.
Bureaucracy, it turns out, is undefeated.
Yesterday (or rather, this morning)
I started the day by waking up the kids, making breakfast, and walking them to school.
I keep mentioning this, but being able to walk the kids to school in the morning is a genuine bonus of my current situation.
Both kids chose to walk with me rather than take the car, which I’m taking as a small but meaningful parenting victory.
The walk itself was peaceful.
This was largely because the fighting had already occurred earlier in the morning while they were brushing their teeth. At one point I had to physically stand between them in the bathroom to prevent what appeared to be the early stages of a Royal Rumble over sink territory.
After dropping them off, I walked home with my son’s best friend’s mom. It was a nice, calm start to the day, and notably free of children fighting with each other.
What I Learned
One unexpected side benefit of unemployment is discovering how quiet certain places are when children are not present.
For example:
- walking home from school
- meeting with financial professionals
- therapy offices
- sitting alone in your office trying to locate tax documents
These are all environments where nobody is arguing about whose elbow touched whose side of the couch.
It’s quite remarkable.
Also, I’m still receiving great messages of support from people, which I genuinely appreciate. I may ask a few of you if I can quote some of those messages in a future post. The kindness has been incredibly validating and encouraging.
Today’s Plan
Once I got home I settled into my office and prepared for my first call of the day with my new career coach and executive coach, Parvin.
She seems friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful.
I should say that, because she will probably read this blog post.
But seriously, I do think she’ll bring value as I work on updating my resume, my brand, and my network.
After meeting with her, I had a little time to start filling out their resume guide. Unfortunately, the system crashed several times.
Every time I wrote about one of my STAR projects and clicked “Save,” the content disappeared.
Which, as it turns out, is the exact opposite of what the Save function is generally intended to accomplish.
At 11 I attempted to connect with my psychologist, Dr. J. May.
Because I am still sick, I couldn’t go downtown to her office, so we had to do the session virtually.
Unfortunately, the email address on file for me is my Cenovus email. She had been replying to my Gmail messages, which made me realize that the meeting invites were probably being sent to my now inaccessible corporate account.
Eventually we connected and had a good conversation.
Apart from me saying that she looked different than she did in her LinkedIn profile (which, as it turns out, is more than ten years old), and then rapidly trying to extract my foot from my mouth, it was a really good discussion.
We talked about what I’m planning to do next and how the events of the past few days have been unfolding.
I mentioned how many people have reached out with kind messages and how validating that has been. It has reinforced that the way I try to approach work and relationships actually matters.
I will keep saying this: if you need a psychologist, Dr. May is excellent.
Even more importantly, whether you’re feeling down or feeling great, having someone in your corner is a really good idea.
Also, therapy offices remain one of the few environments where nobody is fighting over bathroom sink access.
The Afternoon Bureaucracy Block
Now it’s lunchtime.
While procrastinating on making lunch, I’m writing this post.
I have until about 4:45 this afternoon to work on a few things.
The plan is roughly:
- Try to get the resume system to stop deleting my work
- Continue politely badgering Cenovus for documentation
- Begin addressing one of the bigger concerns that has been sitting in the back of my mind
Health.
Those of you who know me know that I have Crohn’s disease.
One of my biggest fears about losing my job is suddenly finding myself without the benefits that cover the medications I rely on.
I used to joke with our wellness and disability team that some of the largest prescription costs in the system were drugs that I personally take.
That joke is now slightly less funny, because those drugs are no longer covered.
My next call will be to Alberta Blue Cross to see if I can get back onto my old Non-Group coverage plan.
I’ll keep people updated on how that goes.
Today, it seems, is largely a bureaucracy day.
I still haven’t made progress on writing my novel or doing much studying, but those will come.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow should be a bit more active.
I have a meeting with a friend and former boss, a physiotherapy appointment to continue correcting the extruded disc in my back (remember the giant sandcastles), and then I’m going to pick up my bike.
I’ll save the photos of the damage to the bike until tomorrow.
Let’s just say I really managed to destroy that thing.
After that I will likely return home and resume my role as peacekeeper, attempting to determine what the children are fighting about tomorrow. Also, my secondary, now paying as well as any other, gig as an amateur chauffeur.
We’ll see how it unfolds.
In the meantime, I hope everyone is doing well.
And I look forward to the day when I can breathe again without coughing.
Brett Wiens 