Dealing With A Job Loss: Getting Through The First Days

The first few days after the layoff were depressing. Fortunately for me, I had a good friend who had been through it. I also count among my friends a very wise elderly lady. They both told me a few things to remember:

Things To Remember

You are not your job. You may spend the majority of your waking hours at your job. But you, the person inside, are not your job. You have an identity separate from your job skills. Look to the things that fill your life, and make a list of all that you are that is not job-related.

There will be an adjustment period. You can call it grief. You can call it adjustment. But you will have a period of time when you are adjusting to the loss of your job, particularly if it was sudden. For me, I was unbelieving. Then so very angry. Then I accepted it and started to make plans. (This didn’t all happen at once. I will admit here that I was pretty worthless for about four days.)

“This too shall pass”. My elderly friend of mine, 93 years old, told me this. Everything passes. Things will continue to change, and something will come up. I just had to make myself ready to accept the right opportunity when it came along.

Turning It Positive

Once I got through the adjustment period, I was able to turn the job loss into something positive. I had worked full time since I was 19. That’s many years ago. (I won’t say how many). It was amazing to have large amounts of unstructured time, which I put to good use. I volunteered at my daughter’s school. I cooked nutritious meals. I learned how to run a lawn mower, much to the great amusement of some of my neighbors who had to help me out when I stalled it. I crafted. I relaxed.

My friend Richard (not his real name) has also had a good experience. He was laid off in March of this year. Although he is very marketable, the jobs just weren’t there. So he decided to take time off to be with his two sons. He has spent the summer biking and exploring their neighborhood, as well as turning their backyard into gardens. He did land another job, and it worked out he was able to start in September, after the boys go to school. So his sudden unemployment turned into a summer of experiences with his sons instead of shuffling them off to summer camp.

A current coworker took his time off and retrained himself. He had been in middle management at a firm, and when he was without a job he spent 8 hours a day learning all about the new cloud and programming technologies. He knew he didn’t want to be in management anymore, and used his time to update his skills.

I’m not trying to make this seem all Pollyanna-ish. Job loss is hard. Finances get strained. It’s a stressful situation. In the next few articles I will talk about what I did to help ease the difficulties until I was able to get back to work.

Articles In The Series:

• Dealing With A Job Loss: Introduction
• Dealing With A Job Loss: Getting Through The First Days
• Dealing with a Job Loss: Cutting Back Expenses
• Dealing With a Job Loss: Home Workload and DIY
• Dealing With A Job Loss: Starting the Job Hunt

If you would like the free e-book of the articles (available now), please visit my store.