Way Down we Go
I like a good blues music. Being old (I feel older than I am, everyday!) means I like old blues music. My typical blues playlist have Gary B.B. Coleman, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Daniel Castro, B.B. King, Curtis Fuller..... I think you get the idea.
I am listening to this type of music lately as my beloved industry is going through a massive contraction. This is nothing new and have been going on for the last two decades. Trouble is this is inevitable in a declining industry, which can only grow (read fake revenue growth) by acquisition. To make long story short, this week alone we are letting go 40 excellent geoscientists, out of 126 excellent earth scientists. That is a 31% cut. Mind you, this is 5th such cut in the last 10 years. In a slow cyclical industry like oil and gas when you do such magnitudes of cuts, you are not cutting people based on performance anymore, you are cutting through the bone!
Image created by DALLE-3
So when I was listening to my typical playlist on an evening like this, I was quite surprised on find Way Down We Go by Kaleo, instead of Five Spots after Dark, like my usual.
Hey, let me tell you that sometimes YouTube's algo can be rather good. I will be honest and say that I have never listen to it Kaleo's music before. Now that I listen to it, I can tell that perhaps I must have listened to it as a part of some other YouTube shorts, as I was doom scrolling!
If you have no idea what this YouTube short is about, it is about a perfect seam position of a swing bowler in the game of Cricket! That wrist position and release, and how the ball tend to just float in the air for just a little bit longer, and then that outswing....the whole thing is a work of art!
But anyway, I digress! You guys can feel that I am totally scatter-brain today!
Back to Kaleo! I just learned that Kaleo is a band from Iceland. A modern blues band from Iceland! That is equally surprising as finding them randomly on my Blue's playlist of folks who are dead for last 50 years! But surprise is what we get these days for virtually everything. I also learned that this track is released in 2015. I felt that the song blends raw blues-rock with haunting gospel undertones. I heard band’s signature gritty sound and front man JJ Jökull Júlíusson’s powerful, gravelly vocals. I heard his lyrics explore themes of downfall, redemption, and inevitability, with lines like
“Oh, father tell me, do we get what we deserve?”
...........Something I was needing today for sure!
Not that I care, yet they don't fire me
This is the part that hurts the most. I don't exactly know exactly what it is. As I have written many times that I am financially free. Also my wife works and she is not quitting or getting fired anytime soon. So I would be happy if they fire me. I will be happy to join hivefest in KL for the first time, crying out loud!
But they don't.
So I keep trying to figure out what and why it hurts:
- Is it survivor's guilt?
- Is it the fact I fired part of my own team? and this ain't the first time..
- Is it my inability to quit and pull the plug?
- Is it my fear of 'unknown' expenses? Medical? Kids College?
- Is it my fear of working again after a break?
- Is it my fear of working for someone else? as I never worked anywhere else..
I don't have answers.
But I can share another blues classic!
Hey! Tomorrow is another day!
Goodnight, and Good Luck!