The second time I was ready.

The first time I got laid off, I sat in my silver Toyota Sienna in the parking lot and cried.

I was in Indiana and my boss was in New Jersey, so my final call was virtual. The language was friendly and professional the way it always is when something very personal is happening to you. After the call, I walked the laptop, the badge, and the Blackberry to the on-site IT manager. I had said my goodbyes the day before, had the good bye lunch, and cleared my office. I remember getting back to my car and just sitting there. I don’t remember how long I was in that parking lot. It felt like forever, replaying everything, trying to understand how I had let this happen.

I thought I had failed. That is hard to admit now, but it was completely true then.

What I did not understand in that parking lot was that I had not confused a job with a job. I had confused a job with myself. The badge was never just a badge. It was proof. Proof that I was valuable, that I was on track, that I was somebody people had decided was worth keeping. When it was gone, I not only had to figure out what to do next. I had to figure out who I was without it.

After that layoff, I tried consulting for a year. I wrote about it in Issue 1. I got a glimpse of what building something on my own felt like. Then I got cold feet and went back to a safe job. I had the evidence. I wasn’t ready to trust it yet.

Sometimes you learn the lesson before you are ready to live it.

Years later, the second layoff came. This time was different.

I wasn’t devastated. I was relieved.

By then, I had already made the decision to leave. I was working through a big project and didn’t want to disrupt the team. I was planning to give my notice in July and make a clean exit on my own terms. I had the timeline mapped. I was ready.

Then they gave me notice in June.

And I remember thinking: well, that works too.

The relief caught me a little off guard, honestly. Not because I expected to cry in a parking lot again, but because I had underestimated how much lighter I already was. I had spent months quietly preparing and building out my options. When the company moved first there was nothing to grieve. The plan had not been taken away. It had just arrived on a slightly different schedule.

A week later I was in Mexico. Not hiding or trying to reconstruct my identity from scratch. Just somewhere warm with blue waters, knowing the hard part was still ahead but also knowing I was not starting from zero.

The floor had dropped and I had not fallen through it.

I was not tougher the second time around. I was just ready. What changed was where I had positioned myself. The first time, most of who I thought I was had been parked outside of me — in the role, the title, the proof that other people's choices had given me. When the company took that back, I did not just lose the job. I lost myself. I lost my way because I was not in the driver's seat.

By the second time, I was in control and running the play. I had stopped waiting for someone else to call the game. I had options, I had a plan, and I had put in the work when nobody was watching. When they gave me notice in June I didn’t scramble. I already knew my next move.

That work does not happen overnight and it does not always feel like progress when you are in the middle of it. But the second layoff showed me it had been real. I was not empty handed. I was not starting over.

I was just starting the next part.

You don’t have to wait for a layoff or other major event to figure out where you have positioned yourself.

Ask yourself one honest question: if the thing you have been leaning on disappeared tomorrow, what would still be true about you?

You already know the answer. Start there.

Until next Tuesday.
Ceaneh