Today the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education voted to eliminate the district’s entire video production department, including its public access television station. Therefore, I and all my co-workers will no longer have a job after June 30th. This was part of an overall “reduction in force” due to the failing economy.
You’ll notice I’m not going to comment on the decision or about the repercussions from that decision. This is neither the time nor the place for such unconstructive things. I’m just telling my personal story.
We were warned earlier in the day that this vote was coming but tonight was my turn to work late at the actual board meeting so I was there during the vote. It wasn’t as odd as you may think to have elected officials calling for your termination in a public forum – it actually happens quite often. What did seem odd was the irony that we were broadcasting live on the very television station that they were voting to eliminate. Anybody watching at home soon won’t be able to see that anymore.*
Personally, this is completely uncharted territory for me. I’ve never been unemployed a single day in my adult life, and I’ve certainly never lost a job before. I was hired in television before I even graduated college 16 years ago and I’ve never had more than a few days off between the different positions I’ve held during my career. You may think that I could actually benefit from a brief break from working non-stop for 16 years, but who can afford a break when you have four mouths to feed and zero full-time jobs. At least I still have some freelance work. Nothing for the whole summer, but starting in August I should have weekend work with the NFL and ESPN again.
Next on my new agenda is revising my resume, which is years out of date. That shouldn’t take too much time and I’ll post it here (and everywhere) once I fix it up. What will take considerably longer is to create a new resume tape, or demo reel. In my field, your demo reel is infinitely more influential than any paper resume. It’s the tape that gets you a job, and I’ve done so much for the school district in the past several years that I’m going to have to start completely from scratch with a brand new reel. I could throw something together in a few days but I don’t want “thrown together” to represent my work. By the end of this month I hope to have compiled a decently polished demo reel to share. And in the mean time, if you hear of any good jobs for me please let me know.
Mike, I am so sorry. Don’t worry, take one day at a time and everything will be okay.
Mike, that absolutely sucks.
Are you hoping to stay in the same area or are you open to relocating? I don’t know of any full-time openings up here right now, but I’ll keep my eyes open for you.
Ideally we’d prefer to stay in Charlotte but we’re absolutely open to relocation for a good enough opportunity (right for me and worth it). But if we had to move somewhere I would prefer New York.
Hey, how did you get your photo on your comment? That’s cool but I can’t figure it out how you did it. I was reluctantly going to add Disqus to make it easier for people to comment using existing profiles but it’s been low on my list.
Dude that really sucks
Yall really taught me and joe a lot too, I hope you find a more secure job because your great at what you do dude!