#92: The Final Boss After a Layoff is YOU
My layoff forced me to be honest with myself. And I'm so grateful that it did.
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The Final Boss After a Layoff isYOU
After two and a half years in career limbo, it finally feels like I’ve crossed back over to the land of the living. Not just gainfully employed enough to sleep at night—but dreaming again.
I’ve been drifting in a kind of purgatory since the moment I got laid off—and honestly, probably even before that.
What I was really dealing with was misalignment burnout—the kind that doesn’t scream, it simmers. You go numb. You carry on. You tell yourself it's fine. I didn’t have a clear vision of what came next. And I didn’t know how to get that clarity.
Worse, I was sidestepping a much scarier truth: I had a dream I had stopped investing in. That dream? To be a writer.
For as long as I’ve been working, I’ve been oddly fueled by other people’s disbelief in my dreams. In my early 20s, after quitting acting and feeling completely unmoored, I took a job as a high school theater teacher in Los Angeles. When I left that job to move back to New York and pursue what seemed like a wildly improbable goal—producing and directing theater on Broadway—some of my colleagues scoffed. I’m sure they talked plenty of shit behind my back about how delulu I was.
Nine months later, I was in New York, working at a Broadway production company.
When that dream reached its natural end—and coincided with my first layoff during the 2008/ 2009 recession—I latched onto a new one: becoming a writer. I still remember the glazed look in my boss’s eyes when I told him I was going to pursue it full time.I’ll show you, I thought.
And I did. A year later, I was a full-time staffer at a popular women’s website.
That’s how it always went: someone doubted me, and I used it as fuel. Where things get hairy is when the doubter is ME. When I start trying to scratch the itch of my dreams with a job that’s almost right—but not quite. When I rationalize why I’m too scared to go all in. (Money. Security. Fear of failure. Self-doubt. The usual suspects.)
That was the pattern I vowed not to repeat after my layoff from my corporate media job in 2023—along with 21,417 others in the industry. Let me tell you: it was so hard not to fall back into the comfort of old habits. But this time, instead of chasing something safe, I took a risk. I started my own business. It wasn’t the entirety of the dream, but it was part of it. It’s given me the breathing room to remember what the dream was.
And now I’m grateful for every full-time job I interviewed for and didn’t get. Each rejection forced me to stop avoiding what I actually wanted: to do my creative work, fully.
This week, I received official word that two of my creative projects—a movie and a series—are officially moving forward. I’m keeping the details vague for now, but don’t worry. I’ll be shouting from the rooftops as soon as I can. Promise—you’ll be rolling your eyes at my relentless self-promotion. And if you hear from me less in the meantime, you’ll know that I am busy making things I care deeply about.
After the layoff, it took me quite a while to admit to other people (and even to myself) what I really wanted to do next. And when I did, I could see it in their eyes: that Oh honey, no look. Some people were supportive. But others? Tried (and failed) to hide their panic. What about health insurance? Your retirement fund? Your future?
And for once, instead of using that disbelief as fuel, I let it scare me.
Because truthfully, I can’t give satisfactory answers to any of those questions… yet. But in order to move forward into my next chapter, I had to do it with full belief.
What I realized was that the final boss was myself.
Getting laid off, especially if your identity is wrapped up in your career, opens the door for doubt to creep in. That voice becomes louder when other people around you don’t believe in your dream—and worse, when you don’t believe it. It’s the part of you that grabs you by the throat and whispers, You are deluding yourself.
Once, during my acting days, I had a teacher who told me something I’ve never forgotten. There was an older woman in my class, let’s call her Alice. Alice was not someone I found to be particularly talented. When the teacher mentioned that Alice would be missing class because she was prepping for a big audition, for a role that seemed like a long shot, I muttered, “Good luck with that.”
The teacher stopped class. She looked me dead in the eye. “What you think about Alice getting that role says more about you than it does about her.”
Boom. Truth bomb. Right in the face.
When someone doubts me—even when that someone is ME—I try to remember: their disbelief isn’t a reflection of what’s possible. It’s a reflection of their fears. Or mine. But I get to choose how I respond.
Following your dreams—the ones that keep tugging at your sleeve no matter how many times you try to rationalize them away—isn’t easy. It’s slow. It’s scary. It’s deeply uncomfortable. Especially when the only thing standing in your way is you.
So, I leave this here for you. If you’ve been laid off—if the rug’s been pulled out from under you—maybe that’s not just a loss. Maybe it’s a call to action. A chance to stop circling around the thing you really want and start walking straight toward it.
It won’t be easy. You’ll have to reckon with yourself in the end.
But if you can do that—you might just end up somewhere better than you imagined.
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