Well, it finally happened.
For a long time, I have been talking about changing careers, leaving the day job, etc. Finally, it looks like God took me up on my request. It truly gives new meaning to the expression, be careful what you wish for. In short, the bottom line, I got laid off from my day job, just at the right time to begin building my business.
This was something whose time had come. The company was having big problems and so, I suspect that big cutbacks were inevitable. My heart goes out to the ones who are left, they will have a lot of work to do and only about half the staff left to do it. Meanwhile, for me, it's onward to other things.
Every morning so far (in the last two days) since I got 'liberated,' I have awakened thinking about one programming problem or another that I was working on at the day job. Old habits die hard - but they DO die.
My first post-liberation question was, do I want to go get another job in engineering? For thirty-plus years, that has been my bread and butter. I spent eighteen years at Medtronic, one and a half at LSI Logic and nearly ten at Guidant/Boston Scientific.
I love programming and I love engineering. I also love developing healing technology. One of my best experiences in life was at Medtronic Neuro, when a patient wearing one of our pain control devices came in for a tour of the development labs. She, her doctor, her husband, her sister and the care nurse who had been with her for years, all visited the company, speaking at the annual Christmas program. This is the annual observance where they have (had?) patients and their doctors speak on their use of the company's devices. - how they boosted their quality of life, etc.
That day, the woman wearing one of the first of the new pain-control device I had worked on (I had been the software lead engineer and architect), along with her sister, husband and care attendant, all took a tour through our development labs - including seeing the rat's nest of a prototype of that device I still had spread out across the lab bench. I will never forget the look on her face when she saw the birthplace of the device that allowed her - finally - to walk again. Regardless of whatever I might say, grousing about the politics of CubeWorld or the foibles and politics of corporate America, that one moment made it all worthwhile.
Seeing the tears of joy in her eyes literally brought tears of joy to mine. It was probably the high point of my biomedical/software engineering career. But it is also part of the past. Now, the future calls.
My personal mantra -mission statement, if you will - has long been To Explore, To Understand, To serve. And now, it is time to put those words into action.
My first change - and I think I had long ago started the first steps down this road - is to become an independent business person - self-employed as a hypnotherapist, anomaly researcher, writer and public speaker on topics such as close encounters and healing work.
One of the biggest things I have wanted to do is push the envelope of what we currently know - To Explore. To that end, I hope to do an increasing amount of work with MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. To date, this has been, to say the least, a mind-boggling adventure. Earlier blog posts (a lot earlier, as I have not been very good at keeping up my blog), describe fascinating things in the UFO and Close Encounter world. I don't need to go into that here. Also, there's a lot more on my two sites: www.craigrlang.com and www.thecosmicbridge.com.
The second point - To Understand: What is the truth behind the array of phenomena we encounter just over the horizon, UFOlogical, parapsychological, esoteric, and much more. I don't know exactly where this will lead but it is very much the center lane of the road ahead. What I do know it that it will most likely involve a whole lot more writing.
First step (after I finish this blog post, that is), is to get my novel published, The Fifth Key. It is a story about two UFO abduction experiencers, caught in the conflict between two civilizations vying for control of Earth (OK, I know you are asking why 'controlled.' Our sovereignty over our world is another whole issue; exopolitics is rapidly becoming a fascinating topic in itself) and our region of the cosmos. After The Fifth Key (which I am now trying to get published), the second book will be Children of the Stars, the continuing story of the two main characters in The Fifth Key.
Somewhere in there, I hope to finish (and hopefully get published) a follow-on to The Cosmic Bridge. this will be a second edition to Bridge and/or an entirely new book, which I tentatively plan to call the Close Encounter Survival Guide. All of this will take me years (hopefully not too many) to get done and out the door. Lots of stuff to keep me off the streets.
The third point - To Serve. This is probably where the small business road will lead - continuing down the road of the healer. It's what I loved most about work in the engineering world and it takes me back full circle, to the pain patient visiting our lab so many years before.
No doubt, it will be centered around my hypnotherapy practice - I plan to focus on fear management, helping people resolve the unexplained and helping people to come to terms with post-traumatic issues. Lots more on this as I develop this further. But for now, let's just say it is the left lane - the fast lane - of the road ahead.
Meanwhile, the transition has been interesting. For the last several days now, instead of getting in my car to go to work, I have stepped through the door into my studio. Once there, I am at work. The first tasks are, update my website, get my book ready to be published and get it sent out to agents, etc. Then it will be to find an office, focus on marketing my hypnotherapy practice, etc. etc. etc. etc. Life is never dull.
They say that being freelance is wonderful - you get to choose your own hours, as long as they total up to 168 in a week (24 X 7). I guess we will see how that works. For now, it is a tremendously fascinating experience to transition from the regularly-ordered world of the corporate cubicle to the completly unstructured world of the self-employed. I expect there will be a lot of lessons in the near future, a lot of joys and a few tears.
Well, enough for now. My office staff (my two shelty-poo pups, Libby and Stormy) need to go outside for a few moments.
