It’s been 7 weeks since my firing.
I’ve started to write about it a few times–on LinkedIn or Instagram, on drafts for this blog. But, I haven’t come up with anything.
Mostly, I’ve written about it in my journal. There, I can ramble and change my mind about how it felt 100 times.
The truth is it felt bad. Obviously. Nobody wants to be fired.
The flip side is that I didn’t want to work there anymore. I hadn’t wanted to work there for a long time. I’d been doing mental gymnastics for months, convincing myself to stay for one reason or another, giving myself a finish line and then pushing it just another couple of weeks.
I can’t go before so-and-so comes back from leave.
Now, I have to give her time to get caught up.
Well, it’s almost time for annual reviews.
Ok, I’ll go once we’re through the next product launch.
I’d say that started around August of last year. It was a vicious cycle of giving up, deciding it wasn’t so bad, trying to get excited, feeling dejected, and starting over, day after day, week after week.
Then, I got fired.
It wasn’t so bad because I already kind of had an exit strategy. I just needed to move up my timeline. Things would be a little bit tighter financially but it wasn’t a disaster.
(Considering the mass quantities of people who have been laid off in recent months, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to end up unemployed without having gone through months of planning to be unemployed).
I had already decided that I would take time away from full-time work. I had already decided I would focus on things other than Marketing for a while. I had already decided that it was time for a change.
So, why did it hurt so much?
Immediately after it happened, I went to meet a friend at our favorite garden center (I know) because I suddenly had nothing else to do with my day.
“It’s like when you want to break up with someone but they break up with you first.”
Exactly.
I have talked myself into staying with you for months and now YOU don’t want ME?
(I have been in this situation before. Maybe the lesson is I need to stop talking myself into staying because once I want to leave, it’s likely the other party also wants me to. Or will.)
It also stung because I hadn’t actually stopped trying. I still gave what I could to that job over and over and over again. I felt like shit every day. But I got my work done.
And then they told me my work–the work I had to pep talk myself into for months–was fireably bad.
(I’m not going to get into the analysis of whether my work was actually lacking. I’ve already stared down into those particular depths and all I have is what little they said and what I feel.)
In every other job I have ever had (including the one I am currently working), I have been the Person. I took on whatever needed doing and I got it done. I have never failed before.
It sucks.
I hate it.
I hope I don’t have to do it again.
I know I probably will.
So that’s it. Now I have failed. I’ve gone through a kind of grief cycle at this point. I was angry, I was depressed, I was elated, I was confused. And now, I’m pretty much ok.
What I’m struggling with most is a new uncertainty that started brewing last year and has reached a rapid boil. About halfway through my time at that place, I realized, “Maybe this isn’t it.”
By “this”, I mean a few things. Marketing. Functioning within a at a mid-size (large to me) company and all it’s inherent bureaucracy. 9-5 jobs in general. Working remote.
This is the path I have been on for over a decade. Longer if you consider how my entire educational tenure was shooting me straight into corporate life.
If I am not climbing the ladder up to the C-suite, what am I doing? If I don’t want to work for companies like the one I just came from, where will I go? If not Marketing, what?
My identity (and sense of self-worth) has been so tied up in what I do. And, as much as I know this comes from a place of privilege, the corporate ladder feels like the easy path. I know how to do it. I have been training for it my entire life.
On top of that, this world we live in doesn’t look too kindly on change. Somehow, the idea of “stick to it” and grit and focus have become idols. Signals of success. If you don’t do something forever, you failed at it. If you change your mind, it’s taken as evidence that you never knew what you were talking about in the first place.
Or, at least, that’s how it feels.
I feel fickle. I feel unproductive. I feel less valuable. I feel embarrassed.
I also feel like I have closed a stress cycle for the first time in 6 or so years.
I don’t know what I want to be doing for work in 5 years. Or 2 years. Or even 6 months. And that is absolutely terrifying to a Enneagram 3 like me.
For now, I am working part time for a company I adore (shout out, Women Talk Design!) and spending the rest of my time on whatever I feel like it. This will be the rest of 2023 for me.
We’re taking it a step at a time. Sharing this counts as my step for today.