Preoccupied

So the Supreme Court is meeting today to decide the fate of NYRPA v. New York. I believe we won’t know the result until the 7th. Tough wait, to be sure. All sides have a lot riding on this.

I am not able to focus on blogging as much. My employer kind of suddenly but not unexpectedly went through a serious crisis that is going to result in eventual wind down. Most of the employees are gone. But we both agreed not to leave my client high and dry, so I’m going to continue with my engagement while there’s work under a different but far riskier (for me) pay model. The good news is I will make some damned good money in October. The bad news is I don’t know if I will have a job after that. While all this is going on, I’m just not as focused on gun politics or blogging. And I’m not sure if I find another job I’ll really want to continue doing this. We shall see once all this is done playing out.

21 thoughts on “Preoccupied”

    1. Good luck and please don’t go away from this venue.

      I lived on the edge for an entire career and somehow managed to never get fired, though I did change jobs a lot for someone of my generation. My kids change jobs like changing their clothes. I think you are in an intermediate demographic and thus not comfortable with either pattern. Hang in there.

  1. We all have the same or similar issues. Life just gets in the way sometimes. Don’t worry about blogging for now.

  2. Sorry for the upset in you personal and professional life. So what is right for you, but if you stop blogging your viewpoint will be missed. Thanks for your insights.

  3. I feel for you … last year the company I’d worked for for 14 years went out of business … the ordeal took about a year and a half to wind down (and there was some ugliness … because the owner of the company was a dishonest idiot). Been unemployed ever since (except for a temp job that pops up every few months and a bit of freelance work … so we’re not starving).

    Anyway, been there, done that … in the future if it even smells like a company I work for might be having difficulties I’m jumping ship. You couldn’t pay me enough to go through that again.

    Good luck man.

  4. I’ve been there. If it hadn’t been for my Navy retirement check I would have lost my house and everything else. As it was I’m sure it was part of the breakup of my marriage.
    I hope you have better times. If you drop the blog you know you will be sorely missed.

  5. Thanks for the kind comments. I’m not saying I’m quitting. But I don’t know what I want to do yet. Everything is up in the air.

  6. Good luck and God bless. I know what it’s like to have the ship capsize on you. Well, almost. I stepped onto a lifeboat before I knew it was a lifeboat, but it was a close thing.

    I hope you return to blogging. For the near decade that I’ve been following this blog, you’ve been a levelheaded voice, and I think the gun community needs that more than anything these days.

  7. Best wishes for the future – your blogging has been much appreciated, and I hope to see more from you at some point.

  8. If it’s possible consider taking a break from regular employment to recharge, do it. Similar situation happened to me in 2017. I had a good severance package and spent the first six months of the year studying and writing. When I jumped back in, I landed what is legit the best job I’ve ever had.

    I was lucky, but sometimes we make our own luck I suppose.

    Stay flexible, keep learning, and please keep writing.

  9. My Old Guy’s advice — after I offer my best wishes for the best of luck is — don’t feel bad if you are just not feeling as passionately about some things as you once did. It can be hard to not feel guilty if you at one time elevated some things to almost a religion.

    A long time ago I read that some psychologists believed that the so-called “seven year itch” was a real psychological phenomenon with many or most people. They will be interested in, even passionate about, some activity for a period of seven to ten years, and then just move on. I think I have always been one of those people. Very roughly, I have gone through decades of being hammer-and-tongs about advanced education; then sport shooting activities after I burned out on education; then being lured into political “activism” with many dimensions including gun rights — which had interested me ever since my teens. There were big periods of overlap, but in every case I spent the last few years of an activity not recognizing that “when it’s over, it’s over.” One of the things I have not itemized is, going into business for myself, which I’m sure you recognize as requiring and resulting in preoccupation; today I regret many of my political activities as the wastes of time they proved to be, on which I spent many hours and days that could have been chargeable time.

    Being one of those “[multi-year] itch people,” I really don’t get people who are into the same thing their entire lives; but those are just human differences. Anyone who has sufficient self-awareness to realize their head is just moving along after giving their best to something for a number of years, should not feel guilty. Lots of people give their best to nothing at all.

    1. I find that happens to me as well, to some extent. Of course, some topics — like when Linux was being sued by SCO — had weekly or so updates, so it was an interesting topic to follow up until SCO lost their case, and there was nothing else to report on — but other times, interests seem to come and go based on what’s happening in my life, and whether I can sustain the energy to work on them, and find the time to do so.

      There are even a few things that I haven’t exactly burned out on, but have lost time to work on, and haven’t yet been able to re-prioritize my time sufficiently to get back to those topics….

  10. In this day and time the only lifetime employment is self-employment, and even then not necessarily secure employment, but at least you are in control, mostly.

    Irrelevant to the online posting thing though; lots of folks have and are getting tired of the echo chamber. One solution is that embraced by SayUncle, essentially a link machine that lets you stay engaged and help keep others engaged and apprised of happenings also.

    1. The link model has never really interested me. Those linking blogs are important to the health of the community, but it’s not where I want to be.

  11. What a stressful time. I’ve been there when you don’t know what your job is going to do. Stay strong and you’ll get through it. Good luck figuring it out!

  12. Been laid off three times from two different companies. The first time was stressful but the third time was a real eye opener. A week before going out the door a guy that I worked with augers his plane into the ground, kind of put things in perspective for me. The three times I was laid off the economy flat out sucked, at least you don’t have that problem. Good luck and know that you will be missed if you have to go in that direction.

  13. Sebastion, I’m disappointed in you. Why in the world would you put so much of your energy in your employment, when you have a blog that barely makes enough to pay for the costs of the server it runs on? I think you need to seriously reconsider your priorities!!!

    And I can’t possibly have any sympathy for your situation. Nope, I’ve never been in a situation where I was let go because my company ran out of funding and was unable to find investors, just a week after we drained our savings because we needed to replace a vehicle that just broke down, and a week before my wife needed ankle surgery, and just two months before I had to have an appendix removed, and just three months before my son had to have major surgery to fix a weird ankle rotation that essentially broke his legs and left him in a wheelchair for three weeks….so I obviously can’t relate at all to your own situation. ;-)

    Good luck, and I hope that whatever happens, you can land on your feet when all the dust settles! (And I hope I’ll be able to land on my feet, too…er, rather, I’d hope I could land in my feet, if I ever found myself in the above situation….)

    And, if you can, please continue to post, even if it’s only once in a while. I always appreciate your insights, even if I can only get them once or twice a month. (In some ways, I even prefer it when you don’t have material to post, because often you post the most when a lot of stuff is happening, and usually when a lot of stuff is happening, it’s because our rights are in danger….)

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