#35: 🎧 Total Eclipse Of My Career
Listen to a raw and unedited audio recording from Laid Off Life Day 1. Plus, a big announcement!
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Total Eclipse Of My Career
“What shouldn't a person be able to achieve with precisely the kind of force that is needed to dissolve the powerful, tremendous attachments of life! From that moment on I have known with certainty that the worst things, and even despair, are only a kind of abundance and an onslaught of existence that one decision of the heart could turn into its opposite. Where things become truly difficult and unbearable, we find ourselves in a place already very close to its transformation.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation
The very definition of transformation is going into the dark and emerging on the other side into the light. As astrologer Chani Nicholas put it, the solar eclipse is “a metaphorical burning away of what’s not meant to stay.” In my case, that was my job. In the spirit of reflecting on my career transformation, I’ve spent this week looking back on how it started, and assessing how it’s going more than a year on.
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.
Additionally, I knew that I wanted to document my journey in service of connecting with other people who were going through the same thing. (There are far too many of us!) Though it may look totally different for each person, there is a core, shared experience that applies to everyone who is forced to reinvent themselves and their careers.
For this week’s newsletter, I’m going back to moment zero of my layoff, sharing a raw and unedited audio recording I made on my last day of work.
The woman who recorded this had no idea what was in store for her in the coming months — the anxiety, the hopelessness, the fear. Or what was on the other side of the darkness — the excitement, the AWESOME projects, the freedom. Listening back though, I hear the seeds of wisdom taking root in her confusion.
The moment I took this job, the possibilities I felt for my life started slowly kind of contracting and today's the day that I hope they start expanding for me again. - ME, Laid Off Life Day 1
Without further ado, here it is. You can 🎧 listen to the audio or read the transcript below.👇🏼
🎧Laid Off Life Day 1 Transcript 🎧
It's just a weird day for me because today was my last day at my corporate media job. I've been there for seven years and seven months.
I remember when I interviewed for the job, I said, '“Oh, I guess I could just do this for a year.” And seven and a half years later, I feel like a totally different human being. And I again will feel like a completely different human being, I'm sure, in the coming months. I was laid off which to me was a gift, a blessing, a wish fulfilled.
Because it means that I have time to figure out who I am again without the pressure of earning for a little while. I want to document the process, the undoing of what was done in the last seven and a half years, the trauma, if you will. Not to say that it was all trauma. There were a lot of good things too, but there was also a lot of trauma and I feel like it's, It's gonna take some time to process.
I've gotten a lot of advice from a lot of other people who were laid off. Um, there was a big merger, as is the way in media these days, and a lot of people have a lot of different advice for me.
Take this time for yourself. Enjoy not working. Enjoy getting paid to not work. Stay busy. Don't stay busy. Do nothing. Uh, you know, so lots of conflicting advice. And I just kind of want to sort through what it is and what it all means for me. I want to document that process.
So, what did I do today?
My last day, I went and turned in my computer, my badge, my corporate credit card. I hugged the HR person who laid me off, uh, because I actually really do like her.
A lot of people see a layoff as, as this horrible thing. To me, I saw it as. The best thing that could have happened to me, um, but it was weird because I also honor and respect the fact that my team, the people who work for me, were very upset.
There were people who were outraged about it but I wanted it. So, I had a lot of mixed and conflicting feelings about it where I understood the anger and the upset, but I also knew that if, if it, if this didn't happen for me right now, I don't know, maybe I was about to lose my fucking mind. And this was my most preferred way out.
So I, so I dropped off my computer and my things and I didn't talk to anyone. I had already said goodbye. I had written goodbye emails, goodbye texts, and goodbye drinks. I felt all goodbyed out and I went by myself and I had sushi. I had Omakase and then I walked 20 to 30 blocks in the unseasonably warm weather. I took the subway home. And here I am now, um,
My backpack with my work computer, post-pandemic, commuting back and forth to the office with a full backpack every, every time I went in, felt like a huge weight on my shoulders and the backpack was noticeably less heavy, but I also just felt the weight of that just completely Lifting off of me, but it felt kind of like a phantom limb was missing Going from being needed by my colleagues, by my team, all the time, going at a pace of 200 miles per hour to nothing, zero inbox, no emails coming to me, no Slacks coming to me. felt weird.
I started texting my team members saying, “It's over. You can reach me, you can find me by text now.” And then I was like, they don't need to find me. But, you know, some of them might want to find me. And I might want some of them to find me because I consider them now — I don't know if you say friends or family or trauma bond people. but, um, It's gonna be weird not to hear from them every day, all day.
The moment I took this job, the possibilities I felt for my life started slowly kind of contracting and today's the day that I hope they start expanding for me again.
That's what I'm seeing as my job for the next couple of months. I don't have a job. I don't want a job. What I'm seeing for myself: the dictate is to find a way to feel inspired again. And whatever that takes, whatever that may mean. I am going to document that process. So, thanks for listening and I hope you'll join me.
📢 Big Announcement Time!
Thank you to
for the MAJOR opportunity to co-moderate and help produce the Career Development Track Seminar at Streaming Media NYC along with Lori Greene and H Schuster.When I launched this newsletter, my hope was that it would help me connect with others who were going through the same thing. My wish is now a reality!
Join me in NYC on May 20th for a full-day Career Development Track at Streaming Media NYC. It will include panels, presentations, and workshops that offer best practices for transforming a career from those who’ve actually done it, on building a business around your superpowers, and for marketing yourself without SEEMING like you're marketing yourself. If you are facing a career crossroads, this SMNYC Seminar is made for you. Use the code GoUpstream to get a $195 pass for all the Monday sessions and entry into the networking VIP cocktail party at the end of the day. Get your tickets today!
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