My Fire-versary™

Traditionally the first anniversary gift is paper. And a year ago, I was one of the lucky ones who was on the receiving end of one of those special paper gifts.

It was a pink slip.

Last week was what I like to call my first Fire-versary™ when myself, along with 499 other employees, got laid off from a leading cybersecurity company. See if you can guess which one from the picture.

After having their best year ever according to last year’s Wall Street report, they apparently decided the only thing better than record profits was fewer people to share them with.

It's the corporate version of Ozempic.

So how did I celebrate the special occasion? Well since I left, I haven’t thought about it that much. Of course, I miss almost all the people I worked with (you know who you are). And I definitely miss the stock options.

But, like they say at Boeing, when one door closes another one opens. I’ll be here all week.

I don’t know how my fellow ex-colleagues are celebrating theirs, but in the year that’s transpired, as I wrote about here, in addition to peddling my copywriting and creative directing skills, I’ve fallen into a second career as a book editor. In fact I’m working on editing my seventh book as we speak.

I’ve also been catching up with my life, having done and continue to do things around the house I had to put off when I was employed full-time. You probably know this, but I'm able to do all this because I'm so handy and mechanically inclined. Remind me again, which end of the hammer do I use?

Also, my binge-watching has become both more sophisticated and medically concerning. Between new seasons of Hacks, Your Friends & Neighbors, For All Mankind, Shrinking, Euphoria, Running Point and From, to new shows like Widow’s Bay, Rooster and American Classic, my eyes are in a perpetual state of bloodshot. The price I pay for being Hollywood conversant and a joy at dinner parties.

Honestly the year has flown by. Every once in a while, I still wake up with the instinctive urge to check Slack or log in before remembering nobody’s waiting for me to update a job ticket anymore. And that’s probably the strangest part.

For something that felt so seismic at the time, the world barely paused. The coffee still brewed. The dog still needed walking. TV kept auto-playing the next episode. Eventually the old job stops feeling like an identity and starts feeling like a season finale that might've gone on one episode too long.

Which is fitting.

Because the traditional first anniversary gift may be paper. But apparently the modern one is perspective. Folded neatly into an envelope I never asked for.

What did I miss

Did you miss me? Just kidding. It's a rhetorical question. I know the answer.

I missed you too. What I didn’t miss was any of the social media I’ve been on a cleanse from for the last three weeks.

Alright, maybe I missed it a little.

But you'll be glad to hear I went against all my only child instincts, the ones that scream I can do what I want because the world revolves around me, and stayed strong. I didn’t cave to temptation. I kept my scrolling thumbs otherwise engaged with chores like typing, turning pages on actual books (I’ll never use an e-reader, don’t get me started) and of course the remote since I used some of my reclaimed time to binge The Sopranos, start The Rehearsal and finish the latest season of For All Mankind.

Now that I've tried this little experiment, I’ve learned I can live quite well without Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Having said that, there are events in the world I do want to comment on in real time. Like the can't-happen-fast-enough inevitable indictment of Cadet Bone Spurs.

So I’m moving on to what I like to call the second phase of my cleanse. Behavior modification.

While moderation and I have never made good roommates—Breaking Bad sixteen times, Springsteen over 70 times, The Godfather a gazillion times, the craps tables at the Venetian more times than I remember, Disney's Tower of Terror fourteen times in a row—I’m going to give it another go.

My new regimen, like brushing my teeth and walking the dogs, will be twice a day. Once in the morning, and again in the early evening, a few hours before bedtime to make sure I'm still not seeing the iPhone screen on the inside of my eyelids when I close my eyes to hitch a ride to dreamland (another thing I can use my thumbs for).

I’ll also be challenging myself to limit my two daily scrolls to fifteen minutes each, which to my new way of thinking gives me more than enough time to read through new posts, wish everyone happy birthday and anniversary, reply to all with the clever snark, razor-sharp wit, keen insight and borrowed memes you’ve come to expect from me. Then I'll sign off.

That’s right. To make it just a little less appealing, I'll be logging in and out each and every time I go online. No point in leaving the apps open and tempting temptation.

And if I'm bored during the hours in between—say waiting in a doctor's office, standing in line or wondering why curbside service is taking so damn long to bring my burger out to the car—I'll just find something else to occupy my time.

So it's official. Starting today, I’m back baby. Go ahead, hit the smiley emoji, read the hashtags and AMA.

Have a blast off

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, and if you have perhaps you should use the Google to find better ways to kill time during the pandemic, you probably already know I have a somewhat compulsive side to my otherwise sparkling personality.

Breaking Bad. Bruce Springsteen. Sourdough bread. Las Vegas (in the before times).

One other quasi-obsession I have that I don't blog about much is space movies. Specifically ones about the golden age of the space race: the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo programs. There's been a lot of great movies about them: Apollo 13. First Man. The Right Stuff.

Going to change the subject for a sec, but I'll thread the needle on the back end. Here's the thing: we have way too many streaming services. The house is lousy with them: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime. Disney +. So when Apple TV+ rode into town, I wasn't itchin' to sign up and pay yet another monthly fee.

But as they say in the ad biz, nothing beats free. And come to find out that's exactly what Apple TV+ is. Seems they have a promotion going on for a free year's subscription within 90 days of purchasing any Apple device. Like, say, the wife's new MacBook Air.

Truth be told, the original shows on Apple TV+ haven't been getting what you'd call rave reviews. But the one that, predictably, caught my attention was For All Mankind.

Space? Astronauts? 10 hours? Apollo program? I'm in.

So for the past couple of days I've been bingeing it. I know, I'm as shocked as you are. And I"m here to tell ya it's really, seriously great. The premise is simple: what if the Russians had beat us to the moon, and the space race never stopped? It's alternative history fiction built around the space program.

And for all my show biz pals at the studios, listen up. It's also made me decide that, more than anything, I want to have a bit part in a space movie.

I want to be one of the engineers wearing a short sleeve, white shirt, skinny tie and thick frame glasses sitting at one of the rows of those bulky, green, Mission Control computers.

And I'm not looking for a showy, star turn. In fact the only thing I want to say is one line. During the obligatory pre-launch checklist scene, when it's my turn I want to bark out: "It's a go."

Start to finish, like the best series, it's a rollercoaster ride with unexpected twists and turns, surprising revisionist history and characters you can't help care about. It's making you cry and cheer one minute, gutting you the next.

So I'll be counting down until next season launches, and I'm sure I'll happily binge it a few more times before then.

My advice to you? Don't screw the pooch by missing it. Watch and enjoy.

Godspeed.