#36: 🎧 The Undoing That I'm Doing
Listen to the raw and unedited audio recording Laid Off Life, day 11.
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🎧 The Undoing That I’m Doing
From the day I was laid off, I knew I wanted to document my journey. I just didn’t know how I wanted to do that. Before I launched Laid Off Life last summer, I tried a couple of different documentation methods — audio recordings (a podcast?) and journaling (a book?) — before I landed on this newsletter, which has quite literally allowed me to write my way through the process and the processing.
Last week, I shared some raw and unedited audio from my final day of work. Today, I’m sharing one more audio recording from Laid Off Life Day 11.
Listening back, I think of this moment as the beginning of “the undoing,” as I refer to it. What jumps out to me is that it only took 11 days of unemployment to start having lots of feelings come up. And the“will I ever work again?” panic had already started setting in.
Interesting…because I had several months of severance ahead of me. And even though I had a job interview for a huge, exciting opportunity (spoiler: I didn’t get that job because the whole division ended up getting laid off…the irony!), I was already intuiting that I had a challenging road ahead of me, as I say, “Trying to create your own niche in a world that frankly doesn't need you to create your own niche.”
Tapping into my inner wisdom, I seem to understand that what I wanted next in my career didn’t necessarily exist and that it likely wouldn’t be a 9 to 5. “I will have to create my own dream job. And I don't know if it's a job, but my own dream work,” I say.
Listen to the audio or read the transcript below.👇🏼
🎧Laid Off Life Day 11 Transcript 🎧
I just got back from vacation. It was my first vacation in maybe 15 years where I didn't have a job to return to or something stressing me out while I was gone and probably my first vacation in a good seven or eight years where I knew I didn't have to come back to an inbox full of emails, where, when I'd be on the trip, I'd be constantly kind of clearing them out so that, I only had to go through the 200 or so that were actually important. The rest were just junk. Which was a great feeling, but also a strange feeling.
I kept having these dreams while I was on vacation. I was dreaming of work —that either I didn't tell people I was leaving and I had to go back to the office or the company was manipulating me to try to get me to come back to work and I had to try to say no or it was past my last day, but I still was going in for some reason, just a lot of, weird subconscious stuff.
Waking up In the middle of the night a couple of times just gripped with this panic, this panicked feeling that I would never work again, and was kind of thrilled, but also completely, terrified of that. So there's that. As much as I'm feeling wonderful.
I'm feeling lighter. I'm feeling more present. I'm feeling more feelings. I'm just feeling like a human being a little bit more, but I'm still feeling that panic of, “Oh, shit, it's 10 months from now and I have nothing going on for myself,” which is such a strange thing for me to believe, knowing how hard I work and how many skills I have and how much I've hustled in the past in my life Like, that would never happen to me so I don't know why that's the thought that keeps surfacing I don't know if that's actually the thought that I'm thinking —that I'll never work again —or it's that I'll never earn money again or I'll never be valued in the work marketplace again. But all of those are things I don't know that I even care about So I don't know why my brain is caught in that loop.
Maybe it's just part of the undoing that I'm doing.
I had a job interview today. Yeah, I've been unemployed for exactly — unemployed and not on vacation — for exactly one day. I spent the first day picking up my new laptop and running errands and doing laundry. And then, on the second day, I had a job interview. This one kind of just came out of the blue.
This was a huge job opportunity. While I was at my job, I probably went on, oh, I don't know, I probably interviewed for 15 other jobs. Most of them never went anywhere. A couple I was, I guess, semi-excited about, but in all that time, this job I’m interviewing for is the job that I'm most excited about.
I don't know if I believe in dream jobs. I'm gonna work on trying to figure that out. I don't know if a dream job exists. I feel like I will have to create my own dream job. And I don't know if it's a job, but my own dream work. And that's truly the most challenging thing: trying to create your own niche in a world that frankly doesn't need you to create your own niche. And you have to do it anyway.
In the world of not creating my own niche necessarily, but finding a company and people to work with that check all the boxes of the things that I'm looking for. Creatively, financially, skill set wise, the ability to grow, stretch, learn ,and be challenged. This job seems on the surface like it really checks all the boxes.
I had a meeting today with someone who is very big in my industry. And she wants me to meet with somebody else who is huge in my industry and I just thought, “Wow, like it took me, losing my job to get in the room with the people that I finally wanted to meet with.” And it's like, “Why didn't this happen while I was at my job and miserable and looking for jobs?”
Obviously, there's wisdom in all things and a timing for all things. And I think that you don't get opportunities unless you're ready for them. I don't know if I'm ready for this opportunity. I don't know if it's going to work out. Because I don't know if I'm ready to work again…maybe it's too soon.
Is that enough time off for me to really dive down deep and get to the bottom of myself and my wants and human desires and sort through the mess? Or is going back to work for a kind of a dream opportunity much sooner than I wanted what I want?
I don't know, so I should probably back up. We're talking about being laid off, and I was laid off, yes, and I should say I have the privilege of being laid off in a very privileged way, meaning that I'm getting severance and health insurance covered during that severance period and a lot of other perks that I realize do not apply to everybody who is laid off.
My being excited, may seem glib, but in this situation I am excited. I also have been laid off before in a world where I had no savings, no severance, and was collecting unemployment to survive…but to barely survive. So I understand that struggle. My exit is more of a golden parachute leaving corporate America, kind of exit, which is a completely different thing. And I get that.
So, the stress of when is my next paycheck coming isn't, hanging over my head. Which is why I was happy about this and this was something I had even, prayed for. I don't like the word prayed. It's something I had, I don't like the word manifested either. It's something that I truly deep down desired to happen for myself just because I needed to shake up my life and open things up and I don't know, it would have been hard for me to leave with nothing else to go to. It would have been hard for me to leave and go right into another job. So this was what I wanted or needed. Wanted and needed, I should say.
And backing up even further than that, I was pretty, ill throughout much of my time at the company. And, of course, I understand that the job had a hand in making me ill. I was diagnosed with, Graves disease. I guess it was my second year or so at the company and the effects of the stress were so intense on me.
At that time I knew like, “Oh, I can't keep doing this. I have to find a new way.” And I did find, a lot of new ways or new avenues and approaches to coping with stress. But yet, I didn't take a medical leave of absence. I kept going and, at the time, to be honest, I didn't want to take a medical leave of absence. I was so sick and I was so scared about being so sick and I felt so horrible that actually working kept my mind off of feeling scared and sorry for myself.
I don't know why I'm getting emotional.
So, at the time it was a good thing and it took all of my energy to get myself well again and to keep doing my job. I wanted to leave again but like I said, I interviewed for a lot of jobs, and didn't find something that I was excited about or that worked out for me.
And then the pandemic happened and my partner was out of work. Just because of the nature of his work and things stopping. slowing down because of the pandemic. I thought, “Oh my God, thank God I have my job as much as I feel like I hate it.”
Most of the time I was just happy to have it and I was happy to be able to keep sustaining and we didn't have any financial hardship, during that time. So I was grateful for that. And then, the pandemic, I guess, is still, I guess, we're at the bitter end of it. If there is an end.
I'm feeling healthy, and I'm ready. I was ready at the beginning of this year, very ready. Thought about leaving on my own. Got very scared, very freaked out. Yeah, freaked out about financial security, which is not something I cared about that much before this job. Before I got sick, before the pandemic, before I started to get older.
I was listening to a Brene Brown podcast about leadership and she said something about being surprised by the emotional toll that being a leader takes on you. The sleepless nights, the constant problem solving, the worrying about the people that you work for, the situations.
I hadn't thought of it like that. I knew it was taking a huge toll on me. I guess I had never set out to be a leader. But then there I was and how would I or how did I rise to the occasion? And what did that cost me? And I think that whatever I end up doing for work next, I feel like I could truly embrace leadership. I learned a lot about it and still have a lot more to learn. I could go back and really be a great leader as long as I felt like I had an impact and an influence on the place I was leading. As long as I felt like it was in alignment with my values, and my goals as a person.
I think I'll, I'll call it, call it there for today. More soon when we find out how I continue to feel on my laid-off unemployment journey. Thank you for joining. Okay, next time. Bye.
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