Gillian Libby left New York City after many years and many jobs. She worked in PR/Marketing, film/TV, and was a SoHo shopgirl. She now lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children. She spends her winters trying to catch her kids on the slopes in Vermont. Four Ways to Wear a Dress is out June 7th 2022.
I’ve been told it was a “restructuring” thing. My position was “eliminated” and there was one time I was a counselor at a camp and my direct boss was mad her ex-boyfriend from the precious summer had a crush on me that year instead of taking her back. That was an interesting one.
I have been fired. Laid-off. Let go. Doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s not going to suck any less. Sure, I’ve left jobs I’ve hated that were sucking out my soul every day too, but it’s not the same as someone looking at you and telling you they don’t want to around anymore. It’s the professional equivalent of a brutal break up. It hurts the same way too, but with the added financial and health insurance problems to boot.
There was one glorious time, I got fired but received severance pay to soften the blow. A tiny bit of money to ease the pain and give me a small cushion of time to lick my wounds and look for a job that wouldn’t make me think I’ve made terrible life choices every step of my young adult life. I couldn’t get out of town fast enough. I booked a trip to Rincon, PR, which turned into a month which turned into six. I slept on people’s couches I barely knew and the occasional hostel. I learned to surf and met interesting people that were making a living in unique ways that had nothing to do with a typical 9 to 5. I wanted that kind of life too, but this was before the days of Instagram and travel influencers didn’t exist yet. I, sadly, couldn’t make the travel/ beach bum life work in any real way, but I did learn I wanted a less conventional job one day.
When I did go back to regular life after a year of on and off travel and working random jobs to fund the travel. I did things like worked as a background actor on TV shows and in high end clothing stores while I took sketch comedy and writing classes. I gained so much life experience from all those “lost” years that I draw on in my writing today. I would hear stories of hugely successful people (or maybe I went digging for them on the internet in lower moments) who had been fired and said it was the best thing that ever happened to them because it pushed them in new directions. I wouldn’t go that far, exactly, but I treasure the time I spent searching for my own path now that I’m so firmly settled in my steady adult life.
There is the saying, when one door closes another one opens, we’ve all heard it, but sometimes it’s not true. Sometimes you have to break a window, climb out and scramble down the drain pipe, hoping you don’t fall and break your leg in the process. Hopefully, during the scramble you learn something that makes the next door that closes a little easier to get around.
