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Friday, February 27, 2009

It's Friday....

...and I am going to Connecticut today; in fact I'll be leaving in about an hour or so. I have two classes to teach and then I'll be heading back for a much needed weekend. The weather looks good...for late February...so I don't have any real travel worries.

Well yesterday was the review day, and by and large all went as expected. I took a very big hit in the compensation department, but hearing that from someone who works in the financial services business is like hearing that there will be a Tuesday next week. How big of a hit? Well let's just say that if you look at my bonus last year compared to this year, it's a drop of close to 50%. This is in spite of a very good review. Regardless, I'll say here what I said to my Director:

If this truly is a shared sacrifice among all of us, then I'm fine with the outcome. Sure I'm not "happy" with the numbers, but I've not heard of anyone who is & in the final analysis I have a great job with what I think is a great future.

In life you really do choose your attitude. I can choose to be bitter, angry and suspicious that this is all a scheme to screw me out of money, or I can choose to accept it for what it is and make the very best of it. I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years in dealing with my share of personal and professional issues. All the crying, all the fist pounding, all the bitterness in the world never built a single bridge, solved a single problem or made anyone happy.

Now what to do? Well this gives me an opportunity to look more closely at expenses, so that's a definite course of action. There won't be any vacation or trips this year, but I'll still invest in car maintenance (one of the cars needs from struts, for example) and I'm still going to get my flats screen office TV (although it will probably only have a 720p resolution). It will all work out.

Onward, to Connecticut.

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