I’m not going to mention the name of the company I used to work for. It’s not a secret, and I’m not hiding anything, and I think I’ve mentioned it before (and only that one time) recently, but it’s just not something that needs to be put out there for search engines to find. And it’s not like I’m trying to hide anything either, because I know that several people who still work there pop into the fuju every once in a while, and that’s okay. But again, the people researching me, or the company, don’t need to be privy to my ramblings. Let’s call the company “Gee”.

There are employees at Gee that blog, many of them Facebook, some even Twitter. I follow some of their blogs, some of their Facebooks and some of their tweets on Twitter. And some of them follow mine. All cool.

I had a “sabbatical” from Gee from 2001–2003 and while I was away I still had many friends who worked there and that I stayed in constant contact with. When I returned in 2003, and now for the last five years, many of the old crew have since moved or drifted away. I become, de facto, the source for many for social updates, client updates, managerial updates, all that stuff that departed employees want to be up-to-date on. Now I’m no longer in that position. And that became clear this evening.

An ex-coworker and friend posted a tweet about how beautiful tonight’s sunset was when the sun finally cut through the wet winter clouds. I know this sunset, or at least the view of it, from the 7th floor and still during working hours as the winter brings. I also know some of the summer sunsets that happen later in the day. 

The thing that distanced me from the visceral viewpoint was the lack of the photo. And this status update was by someone who is a great photographer and frequently posting to flickr and other accounts, who even started a great idea of a Gee graffiti wall where employees could put up their own artwork. So I thought it a little odd that there was no link, no twitpic, no upload to Facebook. I almost commented on the status of the lack of a picture but then I hesitated. Not out of awkwardness of communicating with this person, but maybe I didn’t think it simply wasn’t my place anymore.

Now, hours later, I check out the Gee work blog and the picture is posted there. Bam. Now it sinks in that the distancing from Gee, where I worked for eight years, is a crack that will slowly get bigger over time. I hope to not lose the friendships, but there is a another step of removal now. I’ll have to rely on those still there to relay information onto others, and maybe that relaying road to the others will slowly come to its end. 

This transition of communication between layers has happened. Now I’ll be the one relying on my friends still there to answer my questions of hey what’s up, how is business and who are the new clients. I’m at peace with this.

I’m hoping that the phoblographer won’t be upset for me sliding that pic over to my desktop and then dropping it into my fuju style. I don’t think she will be.

I think I’ve discovered the soundtrack to the present (un)employment events in my life, something that I will realize years from now, when the song plays and it instantly brings me back to this time. It’s not the type of music that I would normally listen to, but I’ve been streaming the debut album, Hide Nothing, from the artist’s website since first seeing his video that fellow blogger and pubcrawl buddy JoeMyGod posted a couple of days ago and I can’t get enough of it.

The artist’s name is Matt Alber and his website is here.  

End of the World is about lovers’ relationship falling apart, Matt saying he penned the autobiographical song five years ago while riding the San Francisco MUNI. The utterly romantic video reveals another side, with an ending of hope and promise.

From Matt’s blog:

“I wrote this song almost 5 years ago in San Francisco—most of it on the #30 Stockton MUNI bus en route to my performing job in a musical revue… The biggest love of my life had fallen out of love with me because he thought I had fallen out of love with him. This was the saddest thing that had happened in my life romantically to date. The song was a real attempt to reconcile with someone who meant very much to me.”

UPDATE: Matt’s Mad Men co-star is Zak Barnett.
photo credit Paul Noblin