explaining: so this is what it's like to be laid off

Hi, I'm Elaine this is elaine is XYZ a vlog that's about me suddenly and surprisingly and sadly... losing my job

God it's crazy how time flies. At this point in time two years ago I was so excited to join this venture that was going to finally take me out of China and into New York.

It was going to allow me to take the skills I developed as a journalist and actually merge them with the skills I then spent the last couple of years gaining in advertising. It was going to allow me to be back in the United States but also still play to my more international background.

Most of all it was just a position that made this weird and swervy career of mine suddenly make some sort of sense.

And now on the cusp of this very LinkedIn worthy two-year anniversary:

So yeah, effective that Monday, everyone was just done... and let me tell you it is a very strange feeling to be on a call with the rest of your company on a Monday afternoon and have the news that your job no longer exists be delivered over a phone call to everybody.

Especially when that Monday morning, you had been finishing up so very many Zoom meetings all about the various initiatives and the tasks you had to do for them that were going to last through the holiday season and into next year.

And even more weird knowing that the previous week Thursday you had just thrown the biggest and most successful conference in this company's name with the very specific goal of launching this brand into the next stage. You know, a "Look at us we're freaking important and should be listened to..."

It was a goal, mind you, that we actually kind of succeeded in. Only now the message seems to have become "Look at us, we're freaking important and should be listened to... but too bad for you all, we're out of here."

Funnily enough one of the reasons why I can tell that this shutdown was barely and very poorly planned by those who forced us to pull the plug in the end is because we were a company that was set up for remote work and everything that we do or did was online controlled by the us who were doing it in the day to day... so all the lights were technically still on when we all got fired. In fact, we were explicitly told we wouldn't get paid to turn them off.

Anyway, I probably need more time to process this whole debacle. I already know that I'm pretty lucky in that losing a job does not make me destitute and I don't have any dependents, and really what I need to work through is more of the indignance of being kneecapped halfway through the time that I thought I had to achieve everything I wanted to achieve with this company. Maybe in the future I'll have a more relatable through line of life lessons for everyone rather than this just kind of semi- rant, but all I know right now is...

Just like at the start of the global pandemic when I turned from fun-employment on purpose journeying across the world to uh oh crap I need a work visa to stay in the country I'm in... I find myself in a place where I am yet again in mourning of a future derailed and in the process of figuring out what to do next.

But actually this isn't really a depression Vlog because one thing that surprised me is it's been a little less than 2 weeks since the news dropped and I feel kind of okay? I was obviously shocked and upset on day one and day two, three and four were spent needing a lot of alone time and booze to self soothe.

But by Thursday I found myself getting this inner urge to pick up these little personal project to dos that I hadn't touched for months, sometimes even the entire year.

Like finally starting that French course on one of those little language apps. Finally taking the time to tinkle on the piano and try to relearn how to sight read. Finally enjoying and actually eagerly getting into the zone of sketching again.

For a long time these were all kind of creative hobbies that I had wanted to build into my schedule but, despite knowing that doing them and getting better at them would bring a lot of joy into my life, it felt so very hard like even physically painful to start them. Like I would be done with work for the day and I would go oh this is a great time to maybe draw something and my teeth would literally begin to hurt.

So instead of doing these truly rewarding things to relax I would find myself playing some really dumb mobile games. Yo, I got really addicted to these merge based puzzle apps.

To even call them puzzles seems a little bit insulting to puzzles. The apps that I played the most required almost no thought whatsoever. It was basically dragging digital object onto digital object to create new digital object and I spent hours, days, possibly months wasting my life on merging things. I even ended up downloading three different flavors of these merge based games so that when I ran out of energy on one of them I would go to the next one and then go to the next one and then be able to go back to the first one. And some nights after I was finished with work I would fire these things up and play them until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, just unable to stop merging.

Yes yes hello disassociation and burnout, my old friends. Did I consciously understand that this was a desperate attempt by my brain to shove dopamine pings into its serotonin receptors? Yes. Did I know that this was territory that I had treaded into before and was now treading into again? Yes. Did I know that there were better coping mechanisms out there? Of course. Trust me, my written journal is littered with strategies to claw myself out of this addiction.

Then last week this job disappeared and so too did my desire to get onto these games and like, wow for the first time in almost a year and a half I feel like I don't have to force myself to spend time on me.

It feels a little strange to feel this kind of relief because by all means this job had been a dream job. The work was really meaningful. It paid a livable wage while giving me a chance to remote work across the world, something that I am even more glad now that I took advantage over the summer. I loved all of my co-workers I truly did they were also down to earth and kind and responsible but also just so incredibly very very smart a team that you just gel with 100% is so hard to find and I still... um get a little choked up thinking about leaving them. And yet I was apparently so exhausted that my brain was glitching.

So it's a little early to tell whether it's just the novelty of being laid off that's created this new creative burst of energy. I've got to admit that in my entire career I've never lost a job before I've only ever left ones and so this is in fact pretty new for me. But my one current takeaway is that this is a sign that I have not yet mastered the concept of work life balance, or at least even the ability to manage my own burnout, and life has given me the chance to reset and try again.

So let's try again.