Your Job Will Never Love You Back

Upon returning from her lunch, my boss asked me to prep one more term packet.

“That poor soul,” I thought as I made my way to the HR supply closet to assemble another fateful folder.

I exited the supply closet, packet in hand, and walked over to my boss’s office in which she and the other HR manager were chatting. As was often the case.

Extending my arm, I reached across my manager’s desk to hand her the freshly prepped term kit. Her hands remained still. Folded on top of her desk.

“You can actually keep that one. That one is for you.”

This is cruelty on another level.

The main reason I’m sharing this is the suggestions Lauren makes after her layoff to find yourself outside of your profession.

It’s a big part of how I’ve spent the last two months since I got laid off. It’s really hard to undo not only 12 years of professional conditioning around the notion that “I am my job”, but also the 16 years of schooling before that which trains you to believe that other people will only value you for your profession.

In one of the job interviews I had this week, someone asked me, “how have you been spending the last two months?”

The only answer I could give was the honest one: “I’ve spent it dealing with my anxiety and depression.”

And while I can’t say I’ve beaten that stuff, things are definitely better. I also can say I’ve been enjoying playing with my kids, dating my wife, learning about AI, hanging out with likeminded nerds exploring AI, playing with new web development frameworks, making music in a band, catching up on TV, finding new ways to exercise (kickboxing and HIIT), and exploring philosophy.

It would be nice to have money coming in the door (and it would be doubly nice to have health insurance to help pay for therapy 😂), but I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to figure out who I am again.

(For the record, my layoff story isn’t that dramatic. Layoffs are never easy for either side of the table, but they certainly don’t need to be made cruel.)