After a conversation with Greg last night we discovered something pretty interesting and quite helpful as to why I am in this current predicament despite being able to recall several red flags (which I ignored) indicating that the contract would not last too much longer.

1. The amount of work for me was minimal compared to that of my coworkers who were quite busy.
2. The number of servers migrated left the new spin off company with much fewer servers to support.
3. There was an expression on the face of my recruiter two months ago when she indicated that she was having trouble renewing the contract.
4. They had me doing tasks which I was not originally hired to do, such as administering Lotus Notes and Active Directory to a larger degree.
5. I had a lot of free time with which to write and do other personal things while at work.

The question is, why did I not acknowledge and act appropriately to these fairly significant red flags?

The answer we came to was this. I have a core belief that I have no significant value to bring to the table. In terms of why I ignored the red flags, it was in defense of this core belief. In terms of why I avoided looking for a new position elsewhere - it was to avoid a challenge or test of that belief compared to reality.

This rang quite true both logically and emotionally for me and it explains the reason why I stayed at M.D. Anderson for so long. I faced a significant degree of anxiety when going from M.D. Anderson to Dominion Energy because at M.D. Anderson there was not a lot of work for me to do, it was almost impossible to get fired, my work ethic was shot, and I had no challenges with which to sharpen my skills and keep them sharpened.

There was a degree of challenge as far as the learning curve in moving from MDA to Dominion, however once this learning curve was achieved and I had achieved a significant skill increase in the area of Citrix Administration, the amount of work available for me to do slowly tapered off till there was not enough to keep me challenged. There was a small spike where Lotus Notes is concerned but I had no desire to learn it and I learned a lot more than I wanted to.

Why did they hire me if there was not enough work to keep me busy throughout each and every day? Because due to the migration from Dominion to Highmount, the work load of my co-workers had increased to such an extent that they had no room on their plate for the tasks assigned to me, thus Dominion/Highmount ate the cost of another full time employee in order to mitigate the overflow. Essentially, I was just a temp.

So I avoided the short term pain anxiety of challenging my core belief that I have no significant value to offer, in exchange for the long term pain of unemployment.

Due to the lack of challenges and light work load I felt paranoid that I would be canned at any minute. I wrote off this paranoia for what it was, paranoia about something that was unlikely to happen. What I didn't do was assess and evaluate the above evidence that did exist - that I was there for a short term contract of one year to a year and a half. Instead of evaluating my circumstances I dismissed even the slightest inclination that the contract may not be renewed as paranoid, primarily due to the aforementioned avoidance.

Thus there stood a false dichotomy of a situation that was either too big to deal with OR a situation that wasn't worth my acknowledgment and that any feeling of anxiety that arose I dismissed as paranoid delusions stemming from some other past trauma or habit.

Instead of my efficacy becoming rooted in the everyday challenges of information technology, it became rooted in my Simon the boxer, managing feelings of frustration, anxiety and insecurity.

How do I use all of this information in the future?

Now that I am aware of the intricate details of these age old, habitual behaviors I can at least begin to prevent this from occurring again in the future and come back to this the next time I feel the same way.

The two most recent interviews fell through, hopefully something new pops up soon. I'm living on savings.