What I’ve learned over the last two years
The latest update in my life is that I’m starting a new, part-time gig. The hours are pretty limited to start during this initial trial period, so I’ll be able to continue trading and most importantly, managing my own time and schedule. In some ways, the timing of this feels quite poetic given that I’ll be starting right before my two year anniversary of getting laid off. I still feel like getting laid off was one of the best things to happen to me and I’m so incredibly thankful that the universe saw how unhappy I was and forced me to slam the brakes on the miserable life I was actively choosing. I’m shocked by how quickly time has flown and I feel like a completely different person and because of that I have confidence in my ability to transition back into paid employment with a little more grace than last time.
There’s a lot about this new job setup that feels right and while I’m excited about this new opportunity, work is just one small part of my life. Working towards a clean energy future is important to me, as a member of our local and global communities, but it’s one part of my personal mission. There were very few jobs and companies that could lure me back into paid employment but this was one of the business models and sectors I was most interested in and I’m so glad that I didn’t take or force opportunities that didn’t feel right. Regardless of how this plays out, I’m glad I waited and listened to myself.
Looking back, I now see how important these last twenty four months have been. About ten months after I was laid off, I started applying to jobs, hoping to find something right around the one year mark of being unemployed. That “deadline” came and went and I started to panic because I thought it would only get harder to find something as time went on. There weren’t a lot of jobs in my space during the 6-8 month period where I was actively applying and most of them were paying less than what I was previously making. There were many moments of desperation especially last summer where I just wanted to get any kind of job. I was applying to roles that I knew were not a good fit and failing at interviews for roles that both the interviewer and I knew that I was not interested in.
By staying in the unknown space of uncertainty—of what I would be doing and how I would make money, I created space for something much better to grow. This was actually a company I had applied to a full time role over six months ago but they pulled the job listing after a couple rounds. They said they wanted to continue the conversation but I didn’t think much of this at the time. When they reached back out this year, I had already made the decision to turn down another full-time opportunity and to pursue trading full time. In addition, I had already booked my two month trip to Asia and so I couldn’t start until the summer. This ended up working out better than I could have expected because the full-time role they were hiring for would’ve been too low a salary and more than anything, I just was not interested in working for someone else full-time.
What I’ve learned and come to accept about myself over these past two years is that I value freedom and autonomy over everything else—at least when it comes to work. Time freedom is so important to me that only a part-time role makes sense and because the first couple of iterations of the role did not pan out, we were able to build this custom one now. There are a lot of norms and stories we pick up and that are reinforced as we go through school and enter the workplace as young adults. For many of us who didn’t know what we wanted to do, we took the path that we were told was the best without questioning whether or not it was best for us. I learned that I am not like most people. The things I truly desire and the things that motivate me are not what most people dream of. I’ve always known this about myself, but I didn’t know how to build a life that could actually allow me to explore something else.
Getting laid off and being forced to face the ugly truth about how miserable I was created an opening to try on different stories and see how they felt. I tried lots of different things during these last two years and it took a bunch of tries to find one that fits decently—for now. For anyone who is going through a tough transition right now, I know exactly how you’re feeling. I know the panic and fear that can grow when we’re faced with an uncertain future. I spent over a year living in limbo—of not knowing what I would do or even when I would figure it out. I was so frustrated with myself and the world for not knowing after spending a whole darn year doing nothing but thinking and reflecting. But it turned out that I needed to go through that discomfort beyond year one of not knowing to know just how badly I didn’t want to go back to my old life. While I had cultivated enough self awareness to recognize that the discomfort was a growing and necessary pain while I was going through it, it didn’t ease the overwhelming distress that hovered over me on a day-to-day basis. Transitions are not always easy or pretty, but they are the necessary path to finding or building something better. If you’re going through a hard time and it feels like there’s no way out, believe in yourself to safely guide you to the other side.
It’s easy to love yourself when things are going well. It’s a lot harder to do so when things are not going the way you want. But that is the best time to work on rebuilding your relationship with yourself. The number one thing I’ve learned over these past two years is that nothing is forever and that we can’t let ourselves be dragged by what’s happening in the world outside of us. I felt like my unemployment limbo would never end and I’d be trapped in the unknown for an indefinite amount of time. I remember asking my therapist—what is an “okay” amount of time to not know and be in this space? Could I possibly be stuck in the same place in five years? The thought of that terrified me. But, eventually, I figured things out and I stopped feeling the need to know. More importantly, when we don’t have a good sense of who we are or what our values are, it’s easy for life events to throw us around. We get laid off; we must be an idiot loser. We get rejected; no one wants us. We get promoted; we are incredibly brilliant. We get a lucky break; we deserve our success. If you don’t know who you are, you will let the world tell you. It should be the other way around. Know who you are, know your values, and know your worth so that no matter what is happening outside of you, you can’t be shaken. You tell the world who you are.