You can burst into your boss’s office and let out everything that was buried in your chest, you can ask for a sick leave and never come back or you can simply quit. There are a million ways to leave your job and the worst of them remains; getting fired. Sometimes it’s your fault, sometimes it’s a long thread of a certain project that, when found in your lap, is full of mistakes. Sometimes the company decides to just lay-off its employees and voila – you’re gone. It’s hard because you didn’t choose to be in that position, you didn’t plan ahead for the exact date you are going to just stop going to work. You didn’t get to contemplate over the fact that there will be no pay check at the end of this month. You didn’t get a chance. This situation was bestowed upon you. Which leads us to the first step.
Shock
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Just like a break-up. The first thing you feel is the nagging question of how did this happen. Why me? What am I going to do? You talk about your job all the time. Whether you loved it or hated it, you’ll still about it. Sometimes you’ll talk about your job as if you’re still working there, then you’ll remember you got fired from it and you’ll tear up a little. It was your significant other for so long how can it do this to you.
Happiness
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Like a bi-polar episode, you go right from grief to complete euphoria. Thinking about how you can spend every penny you saved for your own happiness. Drink Starbucks every day? Check! Eat all your meals from different restaurants? Check! Book a luxurious trip around Europe? Check and check! The thing we all miss the most about being a student is the three-month summer break of doing absolutely nothing. Why not enjoy that to the max? Who knows when it will happen again? There are also all the TV series you said you wanted to watch but didn’t. All the things you wanted to learn, from pole dancing to piano. You can do whatever you want, the sky is the limit!
Fear
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Bankruptcy is getting too close. With no pay-check on the way you start to fear for your future. You don’t necessarily regret spending everything you had on random products, but you wish this money would magically reappear in your bank account. Apparently, re-entering your ATM card doesn’t change the number you see on the screen. You start to think if this is going to be your life now; broke, jobless and aimless. You start to feel like your life is becoming meaningless. Without a boss to be holding your leash, are you really living?
Start the hunt
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It’s time for a new era! Time to polish your CV, add all the glorious details of your previous job and throw some copies around the ring-road. Now it’s getting real. You start to contact every person who ever owed you a favor and look through every job opportunity you wanted to have while you were still employed. All your dream jobs are now over the horizon. Just an email away, you can be whoever you want to be.
The wait
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You felt that that was too ambitious, right? We all know the struggle of getting a job. The stable job you had did not make you forget all the pain you went through to get it. Maybe we hope that with our two or three years of expertise it will be easier to be employed. Nope. Now the company is looking for someone with 10 years of experience. The wait is becoming long. The interviews are too degrading. Some employers want to give you less than the salary you started with at your old job. Some companies think you’re actually overqualified. Some just don’t like your face. The cycle continues. You start losing hope that the endless CVs will get any response, or that the you’ll get a second interview at the company you applied for. Then you get an opportunity.
To take or not to take
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You get an offer. A not-too-bad offer. It’s not exactly the one you wanted or the one you were expecting. There are always compromises. Nothing seems like your ex-job anymore. You’ve set the bar too high. Whether it’s the salary, transportation or job description. There has to be something that is not quite what you spent these past months looking for. So you reach this dilemma. Should I accept the job and try to make the most of it or deny the offer and fall in the same loop over and over again?
Word of advice
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It’s a tough situation. You might think that you can’t get out of the cycle of applying and getting rejected. Know that it will have an end. The road might be long and full of uncertainties but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My only advice is to make sure you’re standing on your own road. Don’t jump on a road too high for you. Know your limits. Know that you can achieve more and set off. You’ll get there.
