Sooner or later...

Well, some of you may know, and some may not. Yesterday (25-Feb), I was laid off from Freescale. It's just one of those things: I'm not harboring any ill feelings. In fact, I was in a good mood yesterday after it happened. Today, I woke up with a headache (come on, Advil!), but generally I'm doing alright. In fact, yesterday I was trying to console my managers who were laying me off. They have a tough job, given they have to do so repeatedly. Anyway, the severance package was very generous, and I'm set for a good while. It's a blessing as another local semiconductor company had layoffs and nobody received a severance package. It could have been much worse. It can always be worse, right? And how can I complain that they paid for my graduate degree? We had a good dance, and now it's time for something new.

So the wonderful thing here is I get to put door64.com to the test. I've spent 16 months building this community of 4000 for the purpose of networking between members. Within hours of mentioning my layoff, one friend of mine got my resume in front of five different directors at another local semiconductor company. What will come of it? Not sure. But so far, so good. I always have kept my resume up-to-date, so I'm hitting the ground running. I have heard that keeping in a routine is a good idea, and so I shall establish a new one. One of them NEEDs to be the gym/exercise. Need to get back in shape. Too much sitting in one place for the past eleven years.

I have some good friends in the entrepreneur community, and in particular some friends at a local start-up incubator. They've offered me office space to work during the day, and connect up with local entrepreneurs. In fact, one of the incubator founders just sent me a congratulatory email about the layoff! He was a few years back, and that's how he got his start in start-ups. I have to admit that I gravitate towards that area for a number of reasons, but of course the issue is always income. Let's see what happens.

I have a couple conferences coming up in March that I'll be speaking at, and who knows what that exposure will lead to. And then there's SXSW Interactive in March. Right now, I have much more time to devote to door64 and some initiatives that can bring in some more money. We'll see...

So that's the news from Austin. Hope you all are doing well!

Matt
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