The Emotional Rollercoaster of Redundancy

What it feels like to be on a ride I didn't buy a ticket for

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It’s exactly one month until my full-time, work-from-home corporate job comes to an end.

The one that I turned to when I moved to a big new capital city and craved connection. The one that gave me a steady income to release the chokehold I’d placed on my own business. The one that I’ve had as a constant presence in my life for over three years.

When they first broke the news to me a few weeks before Christmas, I was stunned.

I honestly thought they’d reduce me to part-time as a result of the changes in my role. I didn’t think they’d tell me that there was no role at all for me. But that’s exactly what transpired.

Fortunately (and unfortunately), I was given a finish date of the end of February.

Fortunately, I’d get three more monthly paychecks and then my final payout. Unfortunately, I’ve had to keep logging on and showing up each day, knowing that everything I am doing is for the last time because I will no longer have a job there, come March.

I cycled through the feelings of fear, shock, anxiety and stress over the weeks of December. On the outside, I looked like I was having fun and being my usual happy self. But under the cover of night, I’d awake in the middle of the night, my breath caught in my chest, afraid and alone with my thoughts and feelings.

I had two weeks off over the Christmas and New Year period, and the night before I was due to go back to work, I felt those old, familiar feelings of dread and anxiousness. Kinda like the Sunday Scaries but on steroids. It was super weird knowing I was going back to work, but that my weeks and days were numbered.

In the first couple of weeks, that anxiety made room for some new companions — excitement, optimism, hope… the kinds of feelings that come way more naturally to me. These familiar friends arrived just in time as I began to promote two events I was hosting, teaching and speaking at. (Both sold out, which is just phenomenal!)

As I danced with these newer feelings, I met with a recruitment agency and connected with the career transition support agency my soon-to-be-ex employer has provided me for the next few months.

And yet.

And yet.

When people ask me what I’m moving onto, I have to say: “I’m not sure yet.”

And when they ask me what I’d like to do, I have to say: “I’m not sure yet.”

Because that’s the truth.

Do I take the easier (yet harder) option of treading the familiar corporate path and applying for jobs I’ve done in the past and could easily do again? Maybe.

Is that the next chapter I envisage for my career? Not at all.

Do I continue to hold the hope that there is work out there for me (in all sorts of forms) that is creatively inspiring, aligned and fulfilling, that would light me up and pay me well? Yes.

Do I have it in me to just keep taking one step after another, day after day, trusting that everything will work out for me in the best way and at the right time? I have to.

Add to this a husband who loves me and is genuinely concerned for not only my happiness and the future of my career but also for the bills that keep rolling in and need to be paid and all the plans we have for our immediate and distant future. The one I have to keep reassuring that everything will be OK, that I’ll do whatever it takes, and that I’ve got this.

This.

This is the emotional rollercoaster I didn’t buy a ticket for, but now find myself on.

Yet another void.

Yet another messy middle.

Yet another period of transition and uncertainty.

And on days like this, it feels the hardest. When I haven’t slept, and I have no idea how or when it’s all going to work out. And I’m questioning how it could possibly be any different and even better than I could imagine when I can’t see a single shred of evidence right now.

Yet tomorrow I could feel completely different.

You’d think I’d be used to it by now, being so devoted to my path of personal growth for over twenty years, having my own business for nine years, and holding this tiny flame of a feeling that (somehow) I’m made for more… but it still hits another raw nerve on a deeper layer of me with fresh skin yet to see the sun.

It still asks more of me than I ever think I have in me.

And I still have to sit, be and move with the “I’m not sure yet” until I know.

And I still. Don’t. Know. Yet.

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