Jeff Burmeister

This week’s word is “Nervousness,” –adjective
1. highly excitable; unnaturally or acutely uneasy or apprehensive: to become nervous under stress.
2. characterized by or attended with acute uneasiness or apprehension: a nervous moment for us all.

Yes that is correct this week’s word of the week is a direct reflection of my current mental state. We are going through yet another round of staff reductions here at my client site, but this time around there has been little to no information regarding the details of who these changes will likely effect. So for the first time in all of the layoff cycles I’ve been through, I’m actually very nervous about my continued employment.

We all know that the economy is the main factor in this round of layoffs. In fact, we have more work then workers right now. But they’ll still be moving forward with the staff reduction nonetheless. So I find myself in the most unusual situation of having to wait anxiously for the either good or bad news.

I’ve been have mental images of sitting in a hospital room waiting for the doctors to come out and let us know if a good friend or family member will be alright after some terrible tragedy. But of course that is way too extreme in comparison to the real situation. The real situation is just this; I was brought to my client’s site on a 6 month independent contract to help them sort out their support model. I was asked to stay on for another 6 months after the first contract ended. Then they made an offer to hire me as an employee, which I took. That has accounted for more then three years of my recent life. So I shouldn’t be upset about getting to finally move on.

“Change is a good thing” someone once said… I’m not sure who that was, but I’d like to find that person and talk to them about the difference between planned change and unknown change.

Until we find out, Nervousness is the word of the week.