Embracing being lost in the land of the unemployed

Inever saw my layoff coming. I should have. The signs were everywhere.

At our quarterly meeting, the CEO said, “I know many of you are concerned about the decline in revenue and the implications for you. I can assure you everything will be fine, and that this is just a blip on the radar.”

His fitted grey suit was perfectly pressed and he had his typical swagger and easy charm that helped him survive many board meetings, and enough money to retire many times over. As I looked across the room, I should taken better heed of the uneasy faces of my older colleagues. They knew better. But in my naivete, I thought, “I had a great performance review. I work hard. I’ll be fine.”

Less than three months later, in a long-winded and cringeworthy email that danced around the main point, HR said they were freezing all pay raises.

It was the first shot across the bow. Then, the birthday parties stopped.

My worker Rob, who shared a large cubicle with me, came in one day, furious, and said, “No more free donut Mondays. Did you see that email? I told you this place is falling apart.” He seemed more bothered by this than the pay freeze.

It was little things, and a suffocating feeling of everything shrinking, of services disappearing that should have made me realize how bad things were.

Someone stopped paying the lady who watered and managed all the plants in the office, so she came and took all the plants one day. That’s when I began to wonder, “Is someone going to start being honest about what’s happening?”

Yet my boss still assured me everything was fine. There was still tons of work to go around, so I grinded hard and stayed late. I was sure I could make myself indispensable.

A month later, I got a mysterious invite from a bunch of HR managers I’d never met. That’s when I knew something was terribly wrong. I went into their office and left to pack my box and leave. I wasn’t the first, or the last to leave that office without their job.

I felt betrayed, hurt, and angry. I walked through the parking lot to my car, I realized how naive I’d been.

“How could you not have seen this coming?” I groaned. I winced as I envisioned my close colleagues finding out the news. I worried about my reputation. I cursed myself for not beginning to look for jobs months prior. I’d be starting at zero.

The following day, I walked through a mostly empty grocery store. Fluorescent lights flickered faintly overhead, casting a cold glow over the colorful cereal aisle. The shelves were stacked to the brim following the weekend rush.

I saw two mothers, with babies in their adjacent carts, pushing down aisles, as they quietly talked and surveyed the prices of items. I realized this entire other world existed during the workweek. To my right, an older man with a hat listing the ship he’d served on, was telling the butcher a long-winded story. He gesticulated widely around with his hands, before letting out a booming laugh that carried through the store.

Everything felt slower in this weekday world, but in my mind, everything raced with neurosis and questions. I wondered how I’d ended up here, why I’d been fired before other peers who came to mind. I wondered how long I could stretch my money before groveling to my parents for help.

At the checkout, a pretty young woman with blonde hair, hoop earrings, and bow ties, chewed gum and asked in a monotone voice, “Would you like to donate to wounded veterans today?”

“Uh, not today, sorry,” I said, as I pulled out my credit card, feeling a slight wince of shame, knowing charity was the last of my endeavors as of late.

My girlfriend at the time, who lived with me, was initially very supportive. She consoled me, “It’s OK! You don’t need to work right now.”

“So who is going to pay for all this stuff?” I said, reluctant to accept her reassurances.

I was only 26 at the time. I’d saved some money but had also been acting like a 26-year-old, going out and having fun, spending most of my paychecks. It wasn’t like I had five years of savings pushed away.

But perhaps the toughest part of being in this strange world was the lack of purpose. I felt like a dragonslayer in a world with no remaining dragons.

I began the usual circus of job searching that has you creating endless user profiles on sites that then subscribe you to endless spam emails. I scrubbed every job site far and wide, landing interviews here and there. I groaned and moaned my way through each day, cursing the skies that I’d been cast into this nether region, where I rubbed shoulders only with the unemployed, retired, and stay-at-home parents. And that judgment was such a reflection of my problematic worldview. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with any of those people — or me.

One day, I woke up and realized how negative I’d become. I’d fallen into the trap of self-defeating behavior, which is common after you experience rejection or social isolation. I was thinking in this binary fashion that simply didn’t fit reality.

I realized that I’d allowed so much of my self-worth and identity to be tied up in my job and how much money I made. When I looked back at my childhood, I never had these notions or felt bound by these manners of thinking. Things were so much more pure.

Yet even while employed, I spent so much time worrying about my job. Even when the company was doing well, I still worried. I worried about upcoming deadlines, making mistakes, whether I was as good as my coworkers, that my boss would like my work, that I’d get a good performance review, that my teammates would pull their weight on a project, that hadn’t made any mistakes. It was one long line of worry. I’d become this giant ball of stress that couldn’t unwind.

And here I was, unemployed, with none of those same problems, still worrying.

What became quickly apparent was that I couldn’t foreseeably apply to jobs for twelve hours every day. At a certain point, it just became counterproductive, especially after I’d applied to all the jobs I fit with. I reasoned that I was going to try and enjoy this newfound time some. Rather than spend each moment nickel and diming myself, and ruminating over past grievances, and future threats, I’d try to live a little.

I started exercising, going on walks, indulging in hobbies, and staying busy. I finally had time to spend with friends. I tried hot yoga for the first time — me, a lumbering big guy who didn’t fit in with this class at all. The next morning, I woke up sorer than I’d ever expected I’d be, and I loved it.

I took up some part-time work, just 15 hours a week. It wasn’t much, but it at least gave me an income and a sense of purpose that kept the dark thoughts at bay. I learned how to cook a proper meal for the first time and made something for my girlfriend. It worked wonders in defusing the tension and worry about my career state.

It was a tough period, that ended with a new job four months later. I’d expected it to take longer. But it was formative. I learned to stop being so trusting of employers and to always remember I was disposable, no matter how good I thought my work was.

Above all, I learned that with each closed door, others open, and create opportunities for growth, learning, and soul-searching. Life doesn’t always need to be the constant tug and pull between success and failure.

Later, when I told a new coworker, who was decades older, of the crazy experience I’d had at my prior office, he smiled at me in knowing recognition. He said, “That’s par for the course, Sean. There’s no such thing as job security.”