Open for Business

Hello dear readers,

It is me, your thought-to-be-extinct friend writing to you from beyond the grave. Meaning not that I am an ethereal being, but that I haven’t been blogging in a while.

Warning: it might be a long one and I’m a little rusty. (That’s what she said?)

Today marks one month of being unemployed and honestly, it’s been, like, really tight.

I’ve been far too busy sleeping all of the time and playing a video game where you earn gold for farming turnips to come up with anything creative to say. But now that the wound isn’t so fresh, I am back to feeling like I want to talk about my personal life on the internet.

So in short, I got fired. I didn’t do anything illegal like embezzle money from the company or take the free tampons in the 3rd-floor bathroom…although I do think it would be mysterious and attractive to be some sort of white-collar female criminal. Like Ocean’s 11 or Martha Stewart.

I played it SO COOL when I got fired. I would like to frame it as a power move, but in reality, I think I was trying so hard to not let them see me cry that I cut off the oxygen to my vital bits and blacked out.

My cohorts said that I could have the room if I wanted and they would bring me some tissues to cry into. I politely explained that I just needed some air. I then ran outside to rip a fat vape off my JUUL, sob to my boyfriend while he was trying to drive to his work appointment, and get my cardigan stuck in the elevator.

Getting fired is a lot like a break-up. You cry, then you think you’re fine, then you drive past your office building, or have a work-related calendar reminder you forgot to delete pop up, and then out of nowhere a Bon Iver song starts playing in the background and the rain slowly drips down the windows of your Prius and there go the waterworks.

Once feeling sorry for yourself starts to get boring, you pick yourself up and you say, “GODDAMNIT there is plenty of other fish in the sea and they would be happy to have me!” You give your resume a makeover (which is the professional equivalent of deciding to get bangs) and you go to Indeed.com and find yourself in a purgatory of being both under and over-qualified for everything.

You then think about what your life would be like if maybe you didn’t take everything so seriously, and stopped being such a consumer, took work as part-time “Entry Level Sales Representative”, controlled your online shopping habit and actually used the Fred Meyer coupons they send you instead of feeling like you are “above it.”

You realize that this all sounds incredibly depressing and also make a mental note to really remember those coupons next time because now you don’t have access to free tampons.

The next step in the healing process is to put on Lizzo’s “Juice”, take an edible, read 3 pages of a self-help book and say, “You know what, I went to school for this shit. I actually spent 5 years in school to get a degree for this, and I like doing it and I should get paid to.” You get your groove back baby.

Why don’t more people talk about getting fired? They say that they got laid off, or it just wasn’t the right fit, but no one (including myself when talking to my parents) honestly says “yeah, I got fired. No, they weren’t making budget cuts, they just didn’t want me….specifically me, to work there. And it sucks but it’s going to get better.”

It’s like so weird that that’s not something someone would want to scream from the rooftops, you know?

All joking aside, getting fired sucks and I cried a lot and felt a ton of shame and self-doubt and I had a few days of laying on the couch watching Love Island and wiping my tears off on the cat, but I’m so thankful for the people that have reached out to me and told me about similar experiences they’ve had, and helped me network and find other opportunities. I know my 9-5 prince charming is out there.

Until then, expect to hear a lot more for me,

XOXO

Milky

*all of my images are entirely ripped off of Google Image Search and are not my own.