Who Are You Calling Redundant?!

     This past week, I accepted a job after being conventionally unemployed for six and a half months.  That is what the media and the government call "long term employment".  I did receive a severance payment, bi-weekly from my former employer, after signing a very intricate and Orwellian contract, the terms of which I am forbidden from revealing, per the terms of that contract.  My revealing that they paid me a severance may well have violated the terms of that contract, but hey, I'm living on the edge.  After working at the same place for thirty years and eight months, my reward was, as the company reported to the Ohio Employment Bureau, there was "no work", and my salary for six months for not coming to work.  Not bad for me, financially speaking, but spiritually and emotionally disturbing from my perspective.  In my own mind, I was being unproductive and a drain on the resources of the facility where many of my friends remain to this day.
     Inasmuch as I averaged about fifty hours per work, I'm not sure where the "no work" finding came from.  It may have been that the day the human resources director and the vice president I reported to, told me my job had been "eliminated" in the "management restructuring", the money used to pay me and the other twenty four managers, directors, and staff was re-directed to pay the new CEO.  My guess is that the combined earnings of those twenty four people would just about cover his salary.  Hmmm?
     Returning to the daily routine of work after a prolonged absence makes me feel like I was ill for six months, rather than diligently applying myself to the task of finding a new employer.  But, in fact, I physically feel better than I did when my "redundancy" was declared on March 31st.  Although my weight has increased a few pounds, my blood pressure has actually dropped by about twenty points systolic.  I would have felt much better about the whole thing if my former employer and myself had come to an agreement on my taking a "package" instead of them saying there was no more work for me, somebody else would do what I was doing, and I should just go away.  One cannot help but take it personally.