“I lost my job.”
It’s not an easy thing to say. You might be ashamed, feel guilty, and no doubt you’re extremely worried. Say it a few times, just to yourself, “I lost my job.”
The more you repeat it to yourself, the easier it’ll be to say it to everyone else. You may think, at first, that your hardest conversations will be with your friends and family, but as Rodney Curtis found out, that’s not necessarily the case. They’ll love you just the same. Your biggest threat might just end up being yourself.
“It was the beginning of our family reunion up in Canada and the full weight of unemployment barged into my nighttime,” Rodney writes, “The money’s going to run out, boredom’s going to become a barrier between you and your wife, people will stop calling. The void screams at you with silent fears.”
Rodney always tried to believe the Tolkien quote on his t-shirt.
How do I handle this? I haven’t found a new job yet.
You’re not expected to immediately get back on the horse and start your new job before the next Monday rolls around. Did you get severance? Are you drawing unemployment?
If so, good. You have time. Relax. Take a few days to just relax around the house. When’s the last time you didn’t have to go to work for this long? Really, enjoy it. You’ll be stressed before you know it anyway, so you’ve just got to force yourself to have a little bit of fun.
There needs to be time before you move on, time for the wound to heal.
“You might just want to openly opine about why you’re hesitating to attend an upcoming photo conference because you lost two photo editing jobs in 2009,” Rodney writes, “But there’s a rawness there, a bit of an exposed nerve that hasn’t scabbed or scarred up enough yet.”
