The Year of Hell?

In the less-than-lucid moments between my alarm going off and me actually getting up (a process that took 30 minutes this morning), I was having flashbacks to a Star Trek: Voyager episode from three years ago called The Year of Hell. In it, the crew is involved in a constant string of temporal shifts (big surprise) that progressively make life worse for them, until Capt. Janeway finally just smashes Voyager into the alien vessel causing all these problems — which, naturally, resets everything to normal, and life goes on.

What finally woke me was the realization that my yesterday really did happen, and was not a TV episode or some dream. Let's review:

• End of February: We find out that Disney will be doing layoffs of Salaried and Office/Technical staff, but will give us the opportunity to "volunteer" to be laid off first.
• March-April: Agonize over whether or not to volunteer.
• June: Pick up the pieces after those who volunteered have left. Worry about the "involuntary" layoffs.
• July: Brief respite as layoffs are completed, but workload did not reduce as promised.
• September: Need I say more?
• October: Meeting to tell us that there will be no promotions or raises until March '03.
• November: Yesterday, I find I am being reassigned from the Disney U., my home of the last 3 years, to Team Disney, to work for Communications in some manner. All my projects are either cancelled or to be handed off overnight to someone else.

Now, this shouldn't all be that bad, really. I mean, I've been less than happy at DU for a while, and had even thought of Communications. But I have an intense need to see projects completed, and few of them this year have made that milestone. And I'm not a big fan of sudden change an any regard, which is part of why I didn't volunteer to leave this spring.

There are elements, though, that redeem this year and make it not a year of hell. I finally moved from a temporary position to a permanent one back in August — a redeeming factor right now, in fact. I started going to church again. I met a large number of new friends, and for the first time, I actually have friends in Orlando who don't work for the Mouse. (gasp) So while I am in trauma-response mode right now, the year is not a total loss, and with all apologies to Miss Gaynor, I, too, will survive.