Suffering A Sea-Change

Pardon the interruption for a moment for some news from real life.

I lost my job this week.

I’m in the tech industry and have been for decades, and we deal with it from time to time. The big companies like Amazon and Google often lay people off by the thousands. This isn’t my first time being here, but after a good nine years at my most recent job, I honestly thought I’d seen the last of these times. I thought I’d be retiring there. I guess the universe had other plans.

I Could Use Your Help

I’ve always lived a double life online, keeping my day job as a principal software engineer separate from my passion project of being a Shakespeare Geek (even though they overlap more than you’d think). But there are things you do when you find yourself looking for a job, and one of those things is to use all your resources. With that in mind:

• I can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanemorin/. If you’re in my line of work or know people who are, please feel free to connect. A good network is everything.
• Want to buy a book? My new book, My Own Personal Shakespeare: Macbeth, is a brand new project off to a slow start. On an optimistic note, I do have more time now to work on the second volume in the series. But right now I still need all the help I can get spreading the word about the project’s existence. Please share the link with any actors, students, and educators you know who might have a reason to dig back into Macbeth from a whole new perspective. I hope to establish something here that can grow into a valuable contribution to how people approach Shakespeare.
• Shakespeare Geek Merchandise is always available! With just about 200 unique designs on Amazon, the merch has done okay for me over the years, but it can always be better. I’ve always focused on the “put more Shakespeare into the world” aspect rather than the “make money at all costs” way of doing things. I don’t steal other people’s designs. I aim for quality, not quantity. If you’ve ever considered purchasing from my store, whether for yourself or as gifts for others, these next few weeks/months are when I could really use the help. Buy now, store stuff away from Christmas presents?

What’s Next?

It’s weird being out of work. You feel like there’s a million things to do – update your resume, call your network, set up appointments, search search search online. But also, sometimes you’re incredibly bored because you don’t know what to do with yourself. It’s times like that when I turn to my pet projects, like Shakespeare. Hopefully, you’ll see more content from me over the coming weeks, but hopefully, not too many weeks, if you know what I’m saying.

As a software guy, I’ve also always used Shakespeare as my portfolio for learning new technology. I’m going to have to update my skills in a few key areas, and show that I know what I’m talking about. The obvious way to do that is to make extensions to my work here at ShakespeareGeek.com. Will that bring anything exciting? Who knows. Maybe! Stay tuned!

Thanks to everyone for all the support over the years. It’s easy to put stuff up on the web and just think of the people that will see it as “traffic” but that’s not true here. I know many of you. I’ve had conversations this month with people I first met through ShakespeareGeek over ten years ago. We’re all trying to make life better with Shakespeare. Sometimes that means helping each other out, too. Thanks again. Sorry for the interruption.