Something Useful

As some of you may already know, I'm about to become a statistic. To the best of my knowledge, my job with North Cascades National Bank will be coming to an end at the same time that this month does. Back in October they closed my office down in Orondo, but asked me to stay on for awhile to help out with a retention project. While I was working on that I accepted a slightly less temporary position (through the end of February), providing coverage through the holiday season... I haven't heard anything else since then. In some ways, I'm a bit disappointed: I really like the group of people I work with, and will be sad to see them less often. On the other hand, I'm definitely ready to move on to something different. Regardless of what you may have seen in the media, banking was already a fairly heavily regulated industry, and with all the new rules Congress keeps pumping out it's getting more and more stressful to try and help people, worrying that you may inadvertently break some law or other.

I'm not looking forward to being unemployment, but I do plan on taking a bit of time off before going into job hunting mode. I've got a bit of money saved up, and along with my final paycheck and (hopefully) some severance pay, I'll be able to get by for awhile.

Obviously I'll have a bit more free time on my hands, although based on conversations with former coworkers, it sounds like unemployment is much busier than I would have expected. I think a certain amount of vegging is justified, but I really don't want to get into a habit of that. I do hope to get back into my writing (which I haven't done seriously in several years, so it could take awhile to get back up to speed), but when I'm doing something I like, I can only keep at it for so long at a stretch before it's time to take a break. So, with that in mind, I'm soliciting suggestions for something (or multiple things) useful to do with my time while unemployed. I prefer things that can be done with a minimum of monetary commitment, but have no problem donating my time to a worthy cause. Any input would be much appreciated.

you know what's really awesome?

spending a good chunk of your day cleaning up messes that you didn't create, so that you can keep the auditors happy, so they can keep upper management happy. on the downside, once you get all that fixed, nobody notices that half of your workforce is not so much helping things as actively making them more difficult, even if unintentionally.

awesome

500 bonus points to scott, our bank president, for the following conversation at the end of our open house tonight:

me: hey, if there's any fat tire left, i'll buy it.
scott: just take it.
me: what?
scott: you don't need to buy it. just take it.
me: hey, thanks much!

i definitely walked out of the bank with a full case of fat tire tonight. good times.

as odd as this may sound...

i'm glad i'm not "the boss" all of the time. although if i actually got all of the perks that went along with being the boss, it might not be quite so bad. my supervisor at the bank got this week off, which leaves me in charge of... well, pretty much everything. the manager is in on occasion, but: a) he manages another branch as well; b) he's incredibly busy finishing up loan renewals for all the farmers/orchardists from both branches; and c) he's unfamiliar with and doesn't have access to much of the operations side of things since the merge. so while he is an excellent resource for banking knowledge, and more often than not can solve a problem when i'm not even sure exactly what's wrong, he's not a whole lot of help with the general day-to-day stuff. a lot of it is stuff i can handle: supervising the other tellers, making sure the cash balances, getting the day's work run through the imager and sent of to HQ, etc. unfortunately, i also got left in charge of several of the end-of-year audits, which i have absolutely no experience with. and on some of them, i don't even have access (since i'm not really a supervisor) to all the bits and pieces that i need to complete them, which means i get to bug someone higher up the chain of command. and while they don't mind helping, between their own audits and all the other people who are bugging them, they are quite busy and not always able to get back to me in a timely manner. which again makes me glad i'm not a boss all of the time.

so really, i guess, all of that was a really long way of saying that i'm looking forward to next year.