Heads up...this isn't an inspirational post, this is real life honesty at it's finest.
This all feels a bit strange to me as I never really thought i'd be talking about redundancy at the age of 26. I don't know about you but I tend to think of redundancy as being something that happens to older people in an organisation when the big bosses at the top are squeezing out some employees who aren't as up to date with the latest skills and technologies. I might be incredibly off the mark there, but whenever I hear about people being made redundant it always seems to be so and so's dad or whats her face's aunty, it never seems to be your younger friend.
Two months ago I turned up to work, was taken in to a room and then they said it..."We are doing a restructure within the organisation and unfortunately your role is no longer needed within our new team". Boom. Decision made. Deal with it. Or in simpler terms, "You've been great and all, but you're no longer needed here as you're less valuable to us than joe blogs who sits next to you". It's a bizarre thing to hear (especially after only 5 months being in a company) and that's because when you have a job, you don't think about the concept of leaving that role unless you're deciding to do so. You tend to assume that you'll get up, go to work, come home, sleep and then do it all over again, until a time comes that you don't want to be at that company anymore. So when the option was taken away from me two months ago, it's safe to say that I felt a little lost.
I've been working for 10 years ever since my part time job in retail at 16 and I've always loved feeling useful, being in an office, and getting that pay slip at the end of each month, so suddenly having some forced time off felt pretty weird to me. I'm not going to sit here and say that it wasn't nice to have a few days where I didn't have to get out of bed and go to work, but equally the novelty ran out pretty damn quickly. I did manage to keep myself busy for a short while by pottering around London, watching Netflix, organising some cupboards and generally bumbling around the house not really knowing what to do with myself. However one day I realised that I was really not feeling myself, and I didn't know how to entertain myself anymore.
The feeling can only be explained as being glum. Not really a word used very often, but Google tells me it means 'looking or feeling dejected'. Downcast, downhearted, discouraged, dispirited...the list goes on. I genuinely lost my sense of purpose completely. I felt like control had disappeared and I didn't know how to regain it. So it is safe to say I needed some serious support from the people around me.
I reached out to my nearest and dearest and thank goodness I had them to reassure me that my time away from work was only temporary and it is completely okay to not know what to do with myself for that short time. I have been really fortunate as I managed to get a new job lined up to start in the New Year, but for some reason that day seemed so far away. What saved me was being told to write down some goals. I set myself targets for things to achieve daily, weekly and over the whole period of time off. I really tried to get my life in gear and ready to kick start the new year with a bang.
I don't really have a conclusion to this post because at the time, I genuinely felt down. However now I am a week and a half in to my new role and that 'dejected' sensation feels like such a long time ago. I guess all I can say is that no matter how awful something feels at the time, it has the opportunity to pass if you let it.
1 comment
Pippa, I'm so sorry to hear what you went through. It's probably not much consolation, but I have seen a few other people around our age Tweeting about recent redundancies - so you're definitely not alone in your frustrations. Wishing you all the best of luck in your new role and if you ever need to vent, or want to grab a drink, please do get in touch x
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