Author: redpenguinweb

You’re so happy in your work. You’ve just finished working long hours on that project which was a big hit with the firm’s biggest client. After a restful weekend spent basking in the sunlight of a job well done, you go in to work on a seemingly average Monday, make the usual complaints about the fact that …

As someone who has recently been eliminated in a cost-cutting measure by a large organization, it takes a certain amount of personal growth to not take it personally. The phrase “it’s just business” is a weak excuse for management to excuse the fact that they have not led an organization to success. I have seen …

My name is Jane Vassil and I grew up in New York City in Astoria, Queens. Throughout my life, starting at a very young age, I was faced with several issues that had skyrocketed over time and finally disabled me when I was in my late 50’s. I was always, and still am, a very …

Well, here I am. Sixty-seven years old and wondering what the hell happened! It was not supposed to be like this. I was promised happily ever after and a house with a white picket fence! Where’s my knight in shining armor? Why are the kids still here? Let’s start at the beginning. I grew up …

June 13, 2006 Hon. Tom Suozzi Nassau County Executive One West Street Mineola, New York 11501 Dear County Executive Suozzi, I am writing to you as a concerned resident of Nassau County and on behalf of the “desperate job seekers” who reside here. We just had our weekly breakfast “pep talk,” if you will, and …

You don’t have to be psychic to know something bad is about to happen. It’s a feeling that something is just…wrong. Like that science experiment just starting to grow in the vegetable bin, you can smell something is going on; you’re just not sure what. The day I learned of my own layoff, I was …

After being unemployed for two years, a feeling of anger, sadness and comfort stirs inside of me. There is comfort only to learn there are other people confronting the same stereotyping as I am. I am in my early 50’s and have been operating in the corporate world for over 20 years. I am a …

I was talking to some photographer friends in October, two years after my retirement as a newspaper chain’s executive editor. We were discussing the most memorable pictures we’ve taken, and I said that I loved the Northern Lights shots I took on my trips to Iceland and the snowy owl photos I made on a …

My bed was my dominion, my kingdom, my throne. I would curl up in robes of feathers, caressing the silk of my skin. Every thread kissed me softly and I’d lay my crown atop a field of down, as I dreamed of coin and gems—emeralds, rubies, sapphires—the earth, the sun, the sea. I used to …

In 1999, I had the incredible opportunity to join a newly created non-profit, the Long Island Works Coalition, that had recently been established through the Long Island Association under the direction of its president, Matthew Crosson. I created my new position, Director of Marketing, and joined the organization ready to launch this exciting and worthwhile …