Fired Up
On Wednesday morning I woke up with a to-do list longer than Harry Styles’ legs. At 9 am, I logged in with every intention of kicking ass.
By 11 am, I was let go.
Org changes are never easy. As an overachiever, it’s hard not to take the loss personally. My team shed tears, the SVP gave me his farewell spiel, and HR assured me I was valued. Yet on Thursday, they were fine to move ahead without me.
In the wise words of Beyoncé, don’t you ever for a second get to thinking, you’re irreplaceable.
Before I could even begin to process the news, I had another internal offer on the table. A promotion, even.
I guess you could say I was fired up…
We could have had it all…
Rolling in the Deep
The harshest part about a layoff is that it happens quickly. Companies don’t want burned employees wallowing in their walls. The break must be a clean cut. Chop off the head to be certain.
In the background, upper management has been plotting my dismissal, along with 200 other layoffs, for weeks. I was but a stick in the bonfire. Knowing how many other people were affected doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I’ve been reading about the devastation of job loss, and the stages of grief are familiar to any other tragedy: Denial, guilt, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
The immediate sensation is like being thrown off the building. My termination letter explicitly says Wednesday was my last day. My first question was, “can I still go to my afternoon meetings?”
Emptying a full calendar in under an hour is nothing short of shocking. Everything that was “urgent!!!” minutes ago became instantly insignificant. According to HR, my new job was to process. They snapped their fingers, and my week became void of responsibility.
I took Thursday to luxuriate in that limbo. I wore cozy pyjamas and ate berries in bed while meeting requests swirled my calendar. I did yoga in underwear and ordered a mocha during a status update I was supposed to be running. I wrote this paragraph instead of opening emails.
In the afternoon I began wallowing in a sense of worthlessness. Without work, my day felt empty. I started thinking that I hadn’t done enough to earn my keep. Out of guilt, I couldn’t stop myself from logging on and tidying up files for an easy transition. I updated timelines, bundled documents, flagged emails, and sent links to those who would need it.
All for a company that deemed me unnecessary.
Just when I thought I had a handle on my emotions, Friday came. Emails kept popping my inbox from coworkers who hadn’t heard the news. HR stopped responding to my questions. Through sobs, I stared at my inbox and took in the gravity of the situation. What was I supposed to say? Do I have to be the one to tell everyone else?
I felt abandoned and angry that none of the decision-makers were around to clean up the mess of my sacrifice. People kept turning to me, wondering why the corpse on the other side of the screen stopped responding. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them.
I took one final meeting with two teammates and cried the whole time. They assured me they’d stay in touch. My boss told me I belonged in the industry. I kept crying for everything that could have been.
I started this job five months ago as a career pivot. It was a major decision to move from sales to project management, and I wasn’t sure that I was ready to jump into a technology-focused role. Since then, I’ve allowed myself to imagine a future in tech.
With my sales and creative background, we could have had it all.
When I took the job, I committed myself fully. I don’t do anything half-assed. Most days I wear a bracelet on my left hand with the word “Meraki” inscribed, a Greek word that means:
To do something with passion, love, creativity, or soul. To leave a piece of yourself in your work.
Last month, I finally felt like I was getting the hang of this job. I was given more responsibility, my anxiety levelled out, and I started feeling comfortable in my skill level. Leaving now feels like a missed opportunity. I never had the chance to master the craft. I didn’t imprint enough of myself in my work.
Stripping away this role is confirmation of a deeper fear: that I was never good enough.
The unrealized potential stung the most when I signed my new contract. I’ve resolved myself to a new direction while still grieving. Promotion or not, it’s a farewell to the career path I’ve been concocting in my imagination.
One door slammed in my face. Another rolled out the red carpet.
I guess one team’s trash is another team’s treasure.
Begging for validation
Someone Like You
Despite the rapid succession of these emotions, I’m starting with my new team tomorrow. I had a mere 4 days to accept, move on, and hit the ground running.
The pressure is immense, particularly because this job is a homecoming. A new position with an old team means my coworkers already know what I’m capable of. I question if I’ll be ready to run into their open arms, or if I’ll crash and burn.
The position I’m falling into is a former dream job. Six months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend this offer. Frankly, I don’t think it ever would have been given to me had circumstances been different. That said, desperate times call for desperate measures, and something so sweet could only have been born out of pure bitterness.
Like chocolate.
Part of me wonders if everything has been a roundabout way of getting to where I belong. It’s a familiar theme of “be careful what you wish for.” George Bailey wishes he was never born, only to be shown a bleaker world. Romeo and Juliet find love only to die for it. Lottery winners often lose family and friends in gaining such immense wealth.
There can be a cruel irony to dreams.
After such a quick dismissal, it’s nice to be wanted. It’s supremely validating to have a team declare my value after another threw me out on the street. It’s even more amazing to hear how excited they are to welcome me back. I’m filled with gratitude for that boost of positivity and confidence.
Often the best opportunities come down to serendipitous timing. My husband was, quite frankly, a rebound. I met him in the crowd of a music festival while trying to make a boy back home jealous.
We celebrate five years this summer.
I’m still licking my wounds from Wednesday, but I’m looking ahead to what’s in front of me. I’m sad that this promotion is tainted by loss, but I’m humbled by my former team’s willingness to catch my fall. It’s hard to believe that I’ve failed so far forward.
I just hope I do them proud.
Actual footage of me rambling to HR
Water Under The Bridge
A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to speak about failure to his university students. They built reports on my presentation, and he screenshotted one that read:
My biggest takeaway from Jamie McCormick’s presentation is that failure can set you apart.
I use stories of unsuccessful projects in interviews more than the ones that went right. You learn more out of a catastrophe than something that goes perfectly, though it takes time for those lessons to sink in. Failing forward is more common than you think.
Right now, it still feels like I’m treading water. I’m writing from the messy middle, where all my emotions are raw and the end of the story isn’t clear. Is this new position really a saving grace, or am I putting a positive spin on that which is out of my control?
In some respects, it feels like I have a codependent relationship with my company. A rejection followed by begging is hardly a recipe for healthy boundaries. I’m exhausted from feeling simultaneously victimized and vindicated.
Regardless, I like to see this new offer as proof of my past hard work. By leaving a piece of myself in that team, I laid the groundwork for my own salvation. I built a safety net for future failure.
In these few days off, I’m trying to remind myself how to be grounded amidst the whiplash of rejection and courtship. My mantra for the last few days has been simple: You aren’t what you do.
While “Meraki” is my way of life, I am also more than a title.
Navigating a career is like walking through an Escher painting. Sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down. We’re all figuring out our own professional pretzels, and that’s not an indication of our value as people.
Besides, I’ve been through worse breakups than this one. You can tell because of all the Adele references in this article….
