A Blog from the Past - Sept 11, 2001

On this day, Sept 11, 2011, 10 years from that dreaded day I am posting what I wrote in my now defunct Geocities blog. It was short and sweet. I didn't want to dwell on everything. Here it is below:

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Sept 11, 2001 - I guess I'll never forget this.  It was tough to watch it all happen with the World Trade Center crumbling to the earth and the other crashes happening in DC and PA.  I couldn't understand the reasons why.  I'm thankful for my life and am lucky not to have been in NY when it happened.  It scares me since I travel for work from Logan mostly on American Airlines.  I'm scared to take a flight I have to San Francisco on the 22nd.  My friend Molly called me from the west coast because she couldn't remember what date I was leaving.  There are a lot of things I take for granted and this tragedy really put things in perspective for me.  Things could be a lot worse in my life.

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As I stated, I was thankful I still had my life and I didn't lose anyone. But so many others did. I remember the day so vividly. After arriving at work, per usual, I brought up Yahoo News as my main page on the browser. At the time, I worked at a company called NewsEdge. They published real-time news and information/articles that would be published and integrated on company's corporate sites and intranets. As a Marketing Coordinator I organized email marketing and trade shows. We did about 10 shows a year and most of them were in NY and on the west coast that year. I was planning for a trip out in San Jose in late Sept so things were pretty busy. I remember seeing a small headline on Yahoo that read, "Plane reported to hit World Trade Center". There was no other information. I went to the kitchen and mentioned to a co-worker how odd it was for a plane to get that close to the towers. I figured it was a small plane and maybe it went through a window or something. He agreed how weird it was that a plane was even that close and we went back to your desks.

Then I turned on the radio and was hearing stuff on NPR about DC and attacks there. I thought it was a joke. It didn't seem real. I didn't really understand the situation and what was happening. More and more news started to come in and then I realized what was happening. I saw the photos online of the first plane crashing into the tower. We had a news room downstairs for the editors who post the real time news. Both towers had fallen. Everyone was in shock.

I remember when the VP of marketing at the time (David Meerman Scott) said, "We have many customers in the World Trade Center who are now dead." The gravity of the situation really hit me at that point. I started to think about all the people I knew in NYC. There was my friend Susan, but she worked at the Whitney Museum in upper Manhattan. Then there was my friend KT. I had no idea where she worked. She was in the financial sector and I thought there was a chance she worked at the WTC, but I got an email from her letting me know she worked in NJ and was safe. Then my friend TJ was a law student. He was ok and actually was a few blocks away. I don't talk to him that often but did get an email response from him that day letting me know he was ok.

I stayed at work late actually when most people were already home glued to their TVs (like my roommates). At NewsEdge David thought we should send an email alert out through our email marketing system to let customers know that there would be a disruption of our news wire services due to the WTC's towers falling. The antennas at the top distributed much of our financial news wires.

When I got home around 7:30pm that evening I decided to go on a run to try to de-stress. I recall listening to Bjork's song "Unison" from her recently released album Vesperine. For some reason the song and some of its lyrics stuck with me. "Let's unite tonight." I thought about all the hate in the world. How the WTC tragedy was a direct result of this hate. The terrorists and the US are not united. I thought about the opposite of this song. How un-united we all are. And now, whenever I hear this song, I think of 9/11.

In the 10 years since this horrible day, many more people have died because of terrorism. So many of our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think about how we have had 2 recessions and now possibly a third. So many people are struggling in this post-9/11 economy and I believe it all stems from that tragic day. The US has spent billions of dollars. What if 9/11 didn't happen? Would the world be different today? Would our economy be different? Would another tragic event have happened in its place? Most likely so.

Company Confidential

I am in a dilemma. There are things I want to write about on this blog that I would normally write about on my other Geocities blog since I had that one protected (only certain people had access to the URL). Now, this blog is public, out in the open for all to see. I want to be more open, but I can only be so honest. I can't be as confessional as I used to be in the early 2000s when I was updating my Geocities site like every day with various dramatic events (breakups, work dramas, etc).

I want to write about working at my new job that I started in May. I am working for a technology company. That is as specific as I will get on this blog. I have many observations I want to divulge. What I will say is this: I found something out today that did not thrill me - my company had a massive layoff last November and a significant percentage of employees were let go. Wow. I wish I had done my research. All this time I assumed that my company was immune to this recession. I guess I was mistaken.

It didn't make me feel safe. It didn't reassure me that picking up and moving to Orange County was a good decision. Are they going to do another round of layoffs this year? When? At the end of the third quarter? Will I be on the chopping block because I am such a new hire? There is another girl who started two weeks after I did. Will she too, be put on the chopping block?

We do not have history on our side. How do we prove that we are valuable in such a short amount of time? I am working extremely hard at this job to prove just how valuable I am. I have read countless articles about layoffs and how to avoid them. Let's face it. You cannot avoid a layoff if a decision has already been made months in advance. It's business and a business has to run its business how they see fit.

I refuse to live in fear. At my previous job I was so afraid of being laid off. It affected my productivity. The stress and anguish I put myself through was not worth it. I was miserable working for that company. Then one day, I finally I stopped caring. I embraced anything that would happen. Then, like a gift from God, I was given an opportunity to leave and accept a layoff deal. I took it and ran for the hills. It was the best decision of my professional life. I controlled my destiny.

I am much happier now. I have so much more confidence in my professional abilities. I am learning more and more each day. I am embracing my new job and absorbing as much information and knowledge as I can. I read white papers, take webinars, read articles, subscribe to RSS feeds via Outlook to be a better informed marketing professional. At my last job I didn't do that. I never embraced it. Now I am doing it. That's all I can do at this point. If I end up losing this job it won't be the end of the world. I am very motivated and skilled. I have money in the bank. I can collect unemployment again and search for another job while laying outside in the beautiful Southern California sunshine. Life won't be that bad. How bad could it really be?