It’s been 6 weeks since being laid off, and it’s been quite the emotional roller coaster. I wanted to follow up from my last post to give an update and share some thoughts that could possibly help anybody else going through a similar experience.

As I mentioned in my post about losing my job, I initially had a mixed bag of emotions of fear, anxiety and stress. What I didn’t realize that I also experienced was relief. Relief that temporarily I was an adult with minimal responsibility. Relief that I didn’t have to wake up and solve a bunch of challenges every single day. Relief that I for the first time in 7 years… I could actually take a break. The only problem was, I didn’t really take the break that I needed because I have been so wired to work my entire life and have never included ‘breaks’ into that lifestyle.

January was filled with a ton of consulting calls/meetings as a result. While I definitely enjoyed helping other various small to medium sized businesses with their marketing/growth problems, it was not giving myself the proper relaxation that my body has been desiring for years now. I had days with anywhere from 3-5 hours of calls, on top of some initial interviews with other companies for new roles. It was a bit of an internal battle on how I felt about this because on one hand, I loved that I was able to give back my time and help out other businesses but I also felt like I was back in ‘work mode’ and didn’t have much time for the things I had wanted to do personally; especially writing. As a result, I started to push back interviews, stopped scheduling consulting calls, and made sure my schedule was a lot lighter in February. You’d think that this would be the first step to feeling better but it awoke a whole new problem in me that I hadn’t realized. I have defined myself by my career.

Last week was the first week that I only had 1 interview and 3 consulting calls meaning that my week was wide open. I should be happy and excited to have a week filled with nothing but time, but instead I felt the opposite. It was terrifying. It made me feel insignificant. It made me feel like a bum. On top of that, I also had 3 rejections com through with various companies; 2 being roles that I had high hopes for and was super excited to potentially take on. All of this combined led to feeling pretty crappy about myself and starting to have a pretty negative outlook on the future. The rational me knows that everything will work out in the end, but the emotional me took over and last week was one of the toughest that I’ve had mentally in a while. What I realized though, is the only reason I would let something like unemployment affect me so much is if I’ve let my entire identity be defined by my career. Which it has. I’ve taken so much pride in what I do and what I’ve accomplished that not working has left a huge void in my identity when I look at myself nowadays. I’ve complained that I never got any time to myself, and now with nothing but time to myself, I feel somewhat lost.

So starting today, it’s time to define my identity by more than just my career. We have one life to live on this planet, and it shouldn’t revolve around solely work. There’s so many beautiful things to see and do beyond grinding out long hours behind a laptop and this is my subtle reminder of that. Whether you enjoy writing, cooking, hiking, gaming, whatever… all of us need to start prioritizing what makes us happy rather than what pays the bills. We have all the time in the world to work, but we don’t have all the time in the world to do what we love.

So let’s start doing more of that, cool?