I hope your day got better and that you found some focus. It really *is* hard. How long have you been without enough work to do?

I also wonder how much a company's lack of focus has to do with our inability to focus. Probably not much, really... but I am noticing that my company has the same horrible tendency I have to start a big project and then just drop the ball. Your company also sounds like a disorganized CF sometimes (one day notice for a mandatory meeting???). Working in those conditions is demoralizing.

I would be very tempted to get the date wrong for that awful townhall thing. I hate those, too. On the other hand, maybe it's a chance to run into some people, maybe those people from the other team? I am not sure if you've had the same experience, but I felt like I forgot all my social skills by staying at home and not participating in a lot of structured activities that put me in contact with the same people on a regular basis, or groups of strangers.

The level of dislike I had for any sort of group event grew to levels that became problematic. Maybe it's not so much forgetting social skills, but being really sensitive... anyway, I started going to stuff I wasn't that gung ho about to sort of desensitize myself. Is it possible that the problems you're having with the meetings right now could be in part because you are just out of practice? I *really* noticed that.

That's great that your brother is sober, out of jail, and has his stuff Calling proactively sounds like a good idea. I can't imagine how hard it must be to get sober in jail and then get out and be in the middle of all the temptation again. I imagine it must be isolating. You're not surrounded by people 24/7 anymore and you can't call up your old friends from before.

I don't have a known end date for this job, no. That would actually be better, because uncertainty drives me nuts. That's one skill I am working on - not caring and not worrying about the future of this job! Really, why should I? I don't even like it, so what do I care if something happens to it?

The 'writing on the wall' is not anything like the company going under, more like the parent company starting to strangle the child. This is the first year that the parent 100% owns the child. They've been making changes that work better for the parent than the child, but the CEO is sort of ... uninterested in the details since it's not his company any more.

No one seems to see that the days of freespending without getting approval from the parent are coming to an end. The child has been working with this Wild West mentality where every employee buys whatever they want without supervisory approval, where you create a job for someone's friend and then worry about what they'll do, where you keep people on payroll for six months without work because you like them. It hasn't mattered because there was money to pay. Now the parent takes all the money.

So this dynamic of the parent cracking down and the CEO who doesn't care... it's going to turn into a very different kind of place.