The Gift of Being Laid Off

Getting a pink slip, regardless of the circumstances, is stressful. Your boss may be bereaved to let you go and your colleague in the next office might also be packing her desk into a box, but you just lost your paycheck and its all you can do to stave off panic. As you leave the office, breathing deeply to calm your nerves, you are not thinking about the potential benefits of being laid off.

Over the years, the cumulative number of lay offs between me and my close friends takes more than two hands to count. Surprisingly, however, our stories are all very similar: when you’re looking for a new position, its impossible to relax. Every waking moment is spent browsing job postings or seeking referrals, preparing resumes or for interviews, sending follow up notes or making phones calls. Then, once you land a new job, your so exhausted all you can think about is when you’ll be able to take a vacation.

So, how can your lay off possibly benefit you and your family? If you can find the strength to take a breath, pause between work-searching activities, you might notice that you have one rare commodity that you don’t have much of when you are game-fully employed. You have time, the “half full” side of the unemployment glass.

While time is widely acknowledged as a precious currency, it’s worth noting that it buys a whole lot more at home than it does on the job. For an extra couple of hours at your desk, you might get a thank you. For the overtime on a Saturday, you get a few extra bucks in your paycheck. The conversations I’ve had with my 13-year-old during his first two hours home from school...priceless.

I was laid off last year and have been working as a consultant since, trying the entrepreneurial route after years in a traditional office environment. Much like job hunting, acclimating to intermittent consulting fees instead of a regular paycheck is stressful and nerve wracking. To counter this anxiety, I’ve made it a practice to note--and attach value to--the time that this transition has allowed me to do things that a full-time office job didn’t.

Knowing the school nurse’s name. In the months following my job loss, my son broke his foot in a fluke accident during gym class. This event and the doctor’s appointments that followed, required a number of visits and phone calls to the school nurse’s office. Without the responsibilities of my office-based career, I found myself relishing my role as caregiver, enjoying what would have previously been a harrowing gauntlet in time management. As I left school one day, I smiled to myself as I realized how great it felt to be available to my son without a dark cloud of guilt surrounding me. This smile broadened into a “LOL” grin when I answered the phone two days later and the school nurse said, “Hi Mrs. Stephens, it’s Ann. Mac is okay, but he has cut his finger and I thought I’d give you a call...”

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Rediscovering My Domestic Self. I’ve always prepared meals. As a working, single parent, however, I struggled to call meatballs in a jarred BBQ sauce or pasta with olive oil and parmesan cheese “cooking.” Not only did I have little time once I arrived home from the office, I was feeding a finicky five, then seven, then nine year old, so the menu’s were frustratingly limited. With age, my son’s tastes have matured, and I’ve also recently remarried, creating an opportunity to cook - really cook - and discover a new definition of pleasure. Now, more evenings than not, I am an apron wearing, onion chopping, soup stock creating wife and mother, basking in the “mmmm’s” and “ahhhhhh’s” of my family as I take the time to prepare that simple gift of love known as dinner.

Giving What I’ve Got. For years, our family has made regular contributions to clothes drives, giving trees, and various fundraisers. Time, however, always felt too precious, too scarce to afford to others. With less money flowing into the checking account, I was grateful to realize we still had something to offer the community, our time. In our shifts at the local food pantry, we have discovered that the rewards of our small time allocation are immense, for us as well as the pantry and it’s clients. Regular volunteering is redefining how we perceive value in ourselves and our ability to make a difference. At the same time, we are learning an entirely new feeling of abundance, one that comes from giving of yourself and discovering that this is enough.

There are many more examples of beautiful moments this life transition has afforded me, from crafting many of our holiday gifts to the comfort I feel as my son begins to share his day with me over an after school snack. What these all have in common, however, is my expanded sense of time.

I am grateful this year to acknowledge the simple gift of time, even during the less-than-perfect circumstances of a job loss. While many of us look for another professional opportunity, interviewing with prospective employers or trying our hand at an entrepreneurial venture, its important to remind ourselves not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Take a minute, or even an hour, to celebrate having a little extra time.

Linda Stephens is a mom, working as a marketing consultant and a writer.

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