On Being Let Go

I've written and re-written this more times than I care to admit to. So, I boiled it down to some simple stuff and left it. Sorry if it feels disconnected, I just guess I didn't realize how hard some of this stuff was and the feelings I had yet to unpack.

November 11, 2025, I had a normal Tuesday at work and spent the evening at the end of season banquet with the high school team I coach.

November 12, 2025, I woke up for my normal 6am workout and on my way home I received a message on Slack that there was a Teams meeting (we were a zoom shop) that I needed to be on right at 8am.

A half hour later, the HR representatives from the company I didn't work for had confirmed what I knew as soon as I was the meeting request...

I was no longer employed.

Yeah, there was a script around restructuring and roles changing and I knew most every question was going to be deflected to the large amount of paperwork I was sent to sign and agree to if I were to receive my severance package.

I had a little freakout, got dressed, and headed downtown. I needed to sit somewhere other than the space that I "work" to try and figure out how I was going to tell my wife and family. I also needed to figure out "what's next?" I called my wife on her lunch break and told her what had happened. I called my therapist and asked if she had time to fit me in because I needed someone to talk to.

In the 25+ years since I started working, I had only been unemployed for a total of about 4 months. Every time I moved from one job to another it was either a move I had actively applied for, or a company had recruited me for a role.

To be just dropped into nothingness was hard.

To know the nothingness I had been dropped into was even harder.

You have billionaires telling millionaires they don't need their thousandaire employees anymore because AI will do the job. You have economies and industries collapsing on some degree of that speculation.

You have a job market flooded with talented individuals who can't even get an interview at their local super-market, are tapping into their retirement (if they were fortunate enough to have any), and trying to figure out what they were going to do for healthcare for their family.

You have companies posting fake job openings after laying off thousands of employees because it looks better for share holders.

You have scammers also posting fake job openings so they can try and steal data off of your machine or otherwise trick you into their mailing list or, if you're really unlucky, their never-ending calls about being "pre-approved for low interest financing."

At the same time, you have to figure out how you're going to keep a roof over your head. How you're going to afford healthcare for your family. How you're going to bring in any income.

How you're going to deal with the fact that your job becomes your identity and outside of that you're not really sure what to do.

Eventually, after a lot of weird twists and turns with a fair share of hiccups and heartbreaks...you come out of it on top. Maybe not the way you wanted to spend 10 months. Maybe you could have done without all of the stressful interviews, the hard decisions, and the hundreds of rejection emails.

Maybe.

But it is what it is.