When my phone blew up at 5:30 am from clients expressing their sympathy and wanting to know what happened, well I could only offer a very confused….???…in return.

Check your email and call me after you wake up, they said.

An email from the CEO of my company dated that morning at 2:34am said, I’m so sorry, but we’re done. Effective last Friday at CoB, we closed the doors. Please feel free to work with your clients. 

Well, that’s what they told employees.

We’re pausing operations is what they emailed the clients.

Say WHAT?

It took less than a few hours to contact my clients and come to an agreement where they would pay me the entire fee they were paying the company to keep my services and not have a major disruption to their businesses.  And so entrepreneurship is born out of a default.

By noon that day we had over 400 former employees gathered together on FB furiously trying to connect stranded clients with their former help, madly writing contracts, debating cost structures, finding timekeeping and invoicing software, setting up paypal accounts…you name it, we were doing it.

Between the shock, anger, wondering what to do with company equipment and if we would be paid for our last weeks of work or the unused paid vacation time and insurance questions….we pulled out collective acts together to make lemonade.

It’s been almost a month now and I’m just getting ready to invoice my clients.  It feels good. It feels even better to see a $12/hr raise. Taxes and expenses aside. I’m easily making 50% more.

It’s interesting to see how the universe conspires to give us what we need with the opportunities at exactly the right time for us to use.

The very next day, in a lighthearted text to my Anam Cara wishing him a Happy Birthday, he asked if we could catch-up later in the afternoon.  I wasn’t surprised.  We did some healing back in March. After an almost 2 hour phone conversation…..I have never, ever, in the almot 10 years we’ve know each other had much more than a 20-ish minute phone comversation….we are making plans to reconnect.  It’s a cycle with us. It’s what we need to do.

I had a bit off an ephipany later.  I’ve always maintained that I’m not a threat to anyone. Hell I don’t understand jealousy most of the time.  I don’t want the same things she wants.

We’ve been doing this for nearly 10 years now. Sometimes the time apart is longer than others, but ultimately we circle back around and pick it up again.  I’m not some woman he dated for a few months, or even a year and remained friends.  Hell, it would be easier to accept me as an ex of nearly 1o years who had an amicable split.  But that’s not it.

We rhythmically come back together time after time, after time, after time. We’re not ex’s and never will be…

Fuck…I’m the biggest threat I know……