Yesterday, really, since I don’t plan to post this until tomorrow. But it’s today while I’m writing this, and I am writing because there are too many feelings in me not to. I’m technically employed through beginning of next month, but I am past ‘the conversation’ and disconnected to everything already, just waiting for the official directions on how to ship all my company equipment back. It’s kinda merger-related, elimination of my position in the combining of teams, etc.
It’s not the first time I’ve been laid off. Twice I was laid off from startups that failed and was pretty much the last one laid off on those occasions, helping the failed businesses wrap things up. Once I was laid off from an office that was downsizing in New York, where I’d been for 5 years. It is not a great feeling, but it wasn’t personal. I remember traveling, in 2010, to the company’s headquarters in Indiana, where I trained about three people, doling out my various responsibilities to them, getting my ‘official’ letter stating on paper that my last day would be September 30 (about a month and a half following), and later that afternoon, receiving an email from my landlord stating he and his lady-friend were moving back to NYC and would be moving into the apartment I and my roommates shared, effective – you guessed it – September 30th. That was my biggest break-up with a company – I’d never worked anywhere that long, or honestly, lived in any city, as an adult, longer than 4 years. Until now.
This stretch was 12, nearly 13 years with the company (tho’ in at least 4 different positions), and actually was my next permanent job after that last layoff. The day I’d learned of the simultaneous loss of my apartment in NYC coinciding with my layoff date, I remember getting a migraine and playing songs angrily on my guitar in my hotel room that night as I cried my eyes out, mourning the end of a chapter. The door to my NYC life seemed to be closing resoundingly. I landed in Minnesota after that seemingly by accident – having moved here for 1 month on a sublease, only, I thought, to get my driver’s license and go on the 2-month road trip I had planned for a year when I realized my layoff was inevitable. My driving partner backed out, the trip was delayed, and somewhere in the middle of that season of unemployment, I met Tommy. The road trip happened, and I ended up back here in MN afterward. And it's all history from there – for those of you who don’t know, we met at the Beat Coffeehouse in early 2011, found we were neighbors living two blocks away from each other, in about a month and a half were dating, and after a year and half, married.
Isn’t it so odd that I’ve just posted a video of myself reading my prize-winning poem, ‘Next’ about transition, and right after, my next transition begins? I’ve not cried yet. I will (and should) – it is a loss. And change, even when good change, involves stress. But I feel like I’m also holding my breath, waiting to see what the next open door will be. It’s odd timing, that ‘open door’ themed contest. I’m cautiously optimistic. “I reach out my hand
and jump.”
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