And now for something completely different. The following post is copied verbatim from my friend Nicole who recently volunteered to be laid off from her job as Business Reporter for the Boston Globe in order to save the job of another co-worker who needed to stay in the Boston area. I am so absolutely floored and humbled by her beautiful decision. Nicole's Facebook note has been re-printed here with her permission.

Why I volunteered to be laid off from The Boston Globe

-Nicole Wong, Business Reporter for the Boston Globe til 3/31/09

I know. It sounds crazy, or at least a bit naive, given the worsening recession. But really, my decision to volunteer for a layoff -- so a coworker who needs to remain in Boston more than I do can continue working as the Globe eliminates 50 newsroom positions, or 12 percent -- was rooted in the past few years that I spent reporting in-depth on unemployment.

When I covered the workplace beat in Silicon Valley between 2005 and 2007, I heard so many stories of hardship from people who were unemployed or underemployed. I spent hours listening to the agony of a former small business owner who took a temporary job at a home-improvement superstore at a 90 percent pay cut and then faced age discrimination as he tried to launch a new career. I ate french fries at Wendy's with a music-duplication technician who was postponing marrying his longtime girlfriend for as long as he was unemployed. And I sat at the kitchen table with a semiconductor researcher-turned-automotive technician who had drawn a second mortgage on his home after being laid off three times in six years, whose wife fell into depression and developed an outbreak of scabies, and whose elementary-school-age children knew their family was going broke.

Their stories of strife have lingered in the back of my mind. It's tough being out of work. And even tougher when you have a family or mortgage to take care of.

I happen to have neither.

And I happen to have been extremely fortunate whenever I've needed to find a job.

My Footprints In The Sand (in Florida!)

God has just truly blessed me time and again by sending an amazing employer swooping in -- even offering a position that was even better than my previous one.

Reporting on travel for the Globe has been a blast. I've enjoyed the opportunity to shoot and edit videos for our website, make guest appearances on local and national radio and TV shows, and tell my friends and family that I was inhaling smog, eating insects, and fiddling with a gas mask canister all for the sake of the stories.

So while the job market deteriorates, I have faith that it will eventually work out for me. Because it always does. And I suppose if it takes longer this time around, maybe I'll draw upon the other in-depth reporting I've done -- on airlines, hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions slashing prices to ride out the recession -- and take advantage of the extra time to explore more places.

So that's my plan! If you can call it one. There are a few more details in this email I sent to my colleagues yesterday:

I was hoping I'd get to be the one who breaks the news to you that I've volunteered to be laid off from the Boston Globe in order to save the job of a reporter who has less seniority than me and who has greater needs to stay in the Boston area due to family commitments and other obligations. But who am I kidding? This is a newsroom!

This wasn't an easy decision to make. I've loved working with all of you, learning from all of you, and having fun alongside all of you. I've loved covering the travel beat for the past 1.5 years, and I would have loved to continue reporting on that here for years to come. But I realized -- after weeks of talking to worried coworkers and overhearing them fret to whomever happened to be on the phone -- that at least it should be less of a hardship for me to find a job since I'm more mobile than my colleagues who have spouses, kids, mortgages, and more. (This is probably the first time I'm relieved to not even have a boyfriend or a house!)

I know some people will worry that I don't know what an awful job market I'm jumping into. Rest assured, I know it's dire. In the hours before I confirmed to the Globe that I still wanted to volunteer for a layoff, I was at a conference watching a senior economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and two travel industry researchers explain charts forecasting how much deeper we'll slide into the worst recession since the Great Depression. And I've interviewed countless unemployed and underemployed people over the past few years while covering workplace issues in Boston and Silicon Valley, which was still suffering from the job losses following the 2001 dot-com bust. It'll definitely be tough. But I'm excited about exploring all kinds of full-time -- and, in the interim, freelance -- opportunities across the country (so please let me know if you hear of any!). And I think I'm off to an encouraging start, since I've signed on to a small project helping edit and write a book on business. Maybe this will be a good time to write my own book, too.

I have faith that this will somehow all work out, eventually. It definitely helped that I came to this decision while on vacation a few weeks ago on what was hands down my best trip yet, and one that surprisingly kept getting better and better every few days. I realized that's been the storyline of my career and my life: They keep getting better and better, often in ways I couldn't have imagined and at times when I least expected such blessings.

With that, I'm off to pursue the next great adventure! Thanks for reading and please keep in touch with me through the contact info below.

Best,
Nicole C. Wong

Explorer. Storyteller. Experience Architect.
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Email: nicolediscovers@gmail.com
Twitter: @nicolecwong
Resume: www.linkedin.com/in/nicolewong

I don't have to tell you guys what an incredible person Nicole is, you can read it for yourself. Please contact her if you think you can help or just to send her warm and kind messages. This is our generation - long may it reign.