Barb, I found what you said interesting. It offers both an insight into who you are, and an insight into the challenges that P-C is facing, that so many of us do not understand in a first-hand way.

layoffma, billytea. I'm glad you're there and not here and don't (I assume) have to worry about losing your insurance five minutes before you have a baby.

This is true. Such health insurance as I have (Medicare and private cover) is not employer-related in any way. (Lowercase tea's heritage will be full coverage. This I swear!)

When I got fired they snuck into my office to turn off my computer when I was called into the Weasel!Boss's office. When you make eye contact with the IT people the look like dogs that have shit in the corner.

See, that just sucks. This is not the lay-off of the new Millennium. Bad IT guys! No biscuit!

Best possible outcome -ma! I hope it's lucrative, involves a lot of free time, a lot of less boss and possibly some echidna skulls. Btw, billytea, where do you keep your echidna skull?

That is actually an excellent question. We still have a couple of boxes that we haven't unpacked yet, I suspect it's in there.

Its got to be a stressful situation for you.

It really has been, but honestly that's coming more from the realisation that I don't have any sort of future in this company than from the lay-off prospect. Or at least after Wallybee and I worked through our options.

So I have a question: what is more important, a good work environment or advancing your career?

Coming late to this party, but still. I have historically gone for career advancement over the work environment. I don't regret anything with it, and it opened up some excellent opportunities (most notably the four years in Philadelphia); however, if I had it to do over I'd probably swing the balance further towards the work environment. I have a few thoughts.

It'll rarely be either/or. The work enviroment will have flies in the ointment or silver linings; it can also change, for better or for worse, when key people leave or the firm changes direction. And any position gives you the chance to improve your working skills, especially the generic skills.

Planning is good. Just don't expect things to go according to it. But they'll still let you keep track of where you're going, maintain momentum and have a frame of reference to consider changes in direction.

Happiness comes in different varieties. Look for the kind that lasts.

Having a career is good, or at least it could be. But, listen to yourself. If it sounds like a goal because you can really connect it to you being satisfied with your place in the world, then it's a goal worth pursuing. If it's there because there's a voice in your head built up from the expectations of people around you saying this is what you should want, then there's a good chance it'll take you into a life of quiet desperation.

You have time. If you take a chance, and it doesn't work out the way you hoped, you have time to try something else. If you stay put, you haven't given up being able to try something a little later.

Whichever way you go, do your homework, and be prepared.

I might have missed it mentioned earlier, but this month's Wired magazine has a multiple page article on how Settlers of Catan is the Best Game Ever and not once in the entire article did the writer mention the game's seminal statement "I have wood for your sheep." Just sayin.

Even aside from missing the obvious comment, the writer is on crack. I feel like this is a golden age of sorts for board games, and Settlers has an important place in heralding its arrival; but there are simply better games available now for almost any criteria you're looking for.

Though I've heard the Cities and Knights expansion gives it a boost.

Billytea's words were very, very wise.

I'd like to add that work environment is very important. Having spent too many years working for bosses that would make Michael Scott look good, I can vouch that a bad work environment is very damaging to career advancement.

But I don't think that's what P-C's asking. He's asking whether he should stay on the track he's on or try to shift to what he really wants to do.

(And P-C's uncle is tangential to that issue. While I have definite opinions on P-C's family issues, I've expressed them before, and they aren't central enough to this question for me to repeat them now.)

It sounds like the drug safety niche is something you can live with but not what you really prefer. In this economy, having a job that pays the bills and that you can live with is nothing to look down on. It also sounds like you have options to make the job closer to what you want -- look into them. Re-assess when the economy picks up and the option of going elsewhere becomes realistic.

Which, of course, makes the fact that she's dating him again beyond my ken and my Barbies too, but that's a whole other psychiatrist's couch.

Barb, I wonder if part of the reason they separated is the expectations that he had/way he was treating you and your sibs, and now that that's not an issue, she can justify being back with him.

Since the storms between Nashville and me are being described in increasingly apocalyptic terms, we have decided to declare next weekend Easter. I am relieved. Now I have to track down the two remaining crucial pieces of information for my taxes. I had this information in a folder that has apparently been sucked into another dimension.

As long as the dog didn't eat your homework ....

There's always the chance the dog ate my tax information. He prefers shoes, though.

re: life plans in general.

Hubby had a plan. He was going to put in some years as a Forest Ranger, then move back to Germany and get a job taking care of the Black Forest and live happily ever after in proto-Wagnerian bliss. I suspect he would have stopped cutting his hair and started carried an axe around. (I wish I'd seen him when he was 19 with nearly 300 pounds of muscle and a 30-inch difference between his waist and his chest.)

But anyway, he decided to haul a burning tree off a co-worker one day, ripped up his body, and was fired in his hospital bed when California had the great property tax rebellion that everyone swore would not result in any loss of public jobs and services. So the medical care that would have put him back together properly was not there, and the rest is what it is.

Make plans. Work towards them. Do not be surprised when fate picks up your timetable and laughs hysterically, and for god's sake don't feel bad if the life alarm clock rings and you're not near where you thought you should be.

(I wish I'd seen him when he was 19 with nearly 300 pounds of muscle and a 30-inch difference between his waist and his chest.)

There are just too many jokes to make.

Make plans. Work towards them. Do not be surprised when fate picks up your timetable and laughs hysterically, and for god's sake don't feel bad if the life alarm clock rings and you're not near where you thought you should be.

Yeah, I feel like that if I'm generally happy where I work, there's no reason to shake things up? I think I'll consult with my medical writing brethren at the conference in a couple weeks. Especially since I'm speaking on a panel about being a medical writer in drug safety, which isn't really a position that exists.