Image source: Merlina McGovern
I was feeling a little down today. The post-layoff funk comes in waves. Sometimes you’re on top of the world because you’re finally free of the corporate grind. You are your own boss, projects are rolling in, and you feel energy to do anything. And something that I used to hate, networking, has become something that I look forward to.
When I first started in the publishing industry, and I was a young reporter, the part about my job that I hated the most was networking. Meeting new people, pretending to know more than I actually did. It was all so exhausting. Of course, I wasn’t a reporter for very long, as networking is a key element of the job. I moved more into the background into editing so that I could surround myself with words instead of people.
Now that I’m older, however, I actually enjoy meeting new people and getting to know them. So now that networking and reaching out to strangers is part of my freelance life, I enjoy that as well. It is energizing, and I look forward to it.
Despite all of these wonderful upsides, there are down days. There are days where I’m a bit unsure of next steps. There are days when I feel doubt in the choice that I’ve made. There are days where it can be quite lonely.
And there are just the days of seeing wave after wave of layoffs on LinkedIn and days where you have a sick kid at home and days when you see news of another mass shooting.
Days like that, I can miss being with coworkers in a corporate office where we can talk and cheer each other up. Days like that, it can feel very isolating to be working in my home office. It’s especially isolating because of the pandemic, where I still don’t feel quite as comfortable taking my laptop to a library or cafe to work in a different space.
But today, I took a walk. I breathed in deep. I saw beauty in the small buds bursting along tree branches on my street. I felt the warm sun cutting through the chill wind. I paused and really looked at those beautiful red buds and knew that no matter how the winter had gone, spring was here, and blossoms would soon follow. I felt good.
Sometimes, getting out and looking for beauty is just what the doctor ordered.
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