I walked into work Monday morning, only to walk back out within the hour carrying about half of my desk’s contents and some paperwork about the layoff process. (I went back later in the week for the other half of my stuff.) This wasn’t a complete surprise – we had been warned by management that layoffs might be happening in the near future due to some business changes – but there’s a huge difference between knowing a layoff might be coming to actually having it happen. I drove home, calling my best friend on the way, and unloaded my lunch bag and the box from my desk. After a quick glance at the paperwork – I knew I wasn’t ready to read the details – I did what felt like the most logical option: I went to a morning karate class. Stress relief seemed like a good idea.
After karate, I came home and polished my resume and copied the updates to LinkedIn, re-read my cover letter, and read through some of the paperwork. The actual job hunt would start Tuesday.
I’ve been at this job for about four years now, and it saw me through a number of significant changes in my personal life, not the least of which were a divorce, buying a new house, the sudden need for a new car, and earning my first degree black belt. That’s a lot in four years, particularly when you take into account that I was working full-time, and for a couple semesters, teaching an evening class on top of that. It takes a pretty incredible company with a good understanding of work/life balance to manage that. Unfortunately, even good companies have rough patches, which leads me to my current predicament. I will miss the amazing people I’ve been working with these past few years, yet I’m curious to see what new opportunities are out there.