Advice for Day 93: Careers End, Careers Begin

With this year's glowing ball inevitably smashing into '09, came not only headaches of hangover's future and blurred facebook pictures to be untagged but also the sloshed start of my new career in Chicago and the sober stop of my father's 36-year-long career with his appraisal company. Both are to be expected, but i never realized how important his end would be to my beginning.

My father is a man of his generation, a man of good hard work, a man whose life for better or worse was often defined his job. My father is also no fool and knew that he could not escape the gentrification of the old boy's club type private companies; he knew that even after 36 years, he could still be replaced by someone 36 years younger who would work for half of what he had rightfully earned; he knew loyalty, dedication and missed piano recitals does not equate to a steady job in a shaky economy. And he was right. On Jan. 1st he was "laid off" with 4 weeks of insurance and 10 weeks severance pay.

And a day later, he sat in his home office, smoking his pipe drinking Powers Whiskey and packing up his office supplies to ship to Chicago with his daughter.

He was calm and looked happy, not glazed over whiskey happy, but moving-on-without-regret happy. According to my mother for the past decade or so, most Mondays she would hear a muttered but conclusive "I quit" come from the shower where my father was contemplating his work week. But he didn't quit; he continued to provide for his family the only way a middle class white collar man knows how, by listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car on the way to work and having a glass of Powers after work. He managed until the clock ran out and that shiny fragile ball came crashing down into '09.

But like all things inevitable- the falling ball of new year's eve, the hangovers of new year's day and the start and stop of new careers- he, we, managed and will manage with a little talk radio, a little more whiskey and a lot of hokey family love.