Edition 2: Why is this so hard?

My last newsletter was wrong. “Getting started” isn’t the hardest part. This is.

For that first week, the layoff news didn’t consume me, as much as it consumed everything around me. Why is this so hard?, I remember asking myself, frustrated that I wasn’t handling the news better. It shouldn't be this hard.

I still had my family and a whole network of friends trying to support me. I already “started” my new job search. I updated my resume and LinkedIn profile, and I even received a few good job leads. But even after all of that, I still felt… stuck.

Thankfully, I was eventually able to lift myself up and get moving. But it wasn’t easy, and it most definitely wasn’t because I panic-applied to countless jobs in the middle of the night.

It was because I took a pause.

I took a break from focusing on finding my next job and started to focus on me. That’s when I realized why I was really struggling. It wasn’t just because I lost my job - I felt like I had lost so much more.

I felt like I Iet my family down.

For me, this hit first. After receiving the news, my mind went straight to our finances and determining our runway. I audited all our expenses and divided them into two columns - ‘Necessary’ and ‘Unnecessary’. It’s pretty simple at first:

Rent, Car payment, Utilities. Necessary. Netflix, an embarrassing amount of DoorDash, and a gym membership that I’ve been too lazy to cancel. Unnecessary.

Then I got to Miles’ after-school program, and I couldn’t figure out which column to place it in. I know it’s not exactly necessary, but when I’m giving him a bath at night, I always ask him, “What was your favorite part of your day?” And he always says with his goofy smile, “After-care.”

I already came to terms with the sacrifices I would need to make - I was OK with that. But it was a gut punch to realize that my family might need to make some too.

In my marriage, Cat and I always handle everything together - the good and the bad. This was no different. One night, while we were auditing expenses, I opened up about how I felt like I let her and the kids down. She responded, “Do I need to remind you that when we got married, you were broke? Like BROKE, broke. And we were still able to make things work. And we’re going to make this work. Together.”

I don’t know if all those “brokes” were necessary, but as usual, she was right. (And don’t worry, we decided to keep Miles in after-care. The extra 3 hours of peace & quiet = necessary.) 

I felt like I lost my friends.

For me, the SF office wasn’t just where I worked - it was where I’d grab lunch and catch up with Ken & Diane. It was where I’d meet up for coffee on the rooftop when MaryAnn came to visit from Chicago. It was where MO and I would hijack conference rooms to discuss her wedding planning or my trip to Japan.

And working remotely just blurred those lines between work & personal even further. Miles would pop up unannounced on my Teams call and say hi to Charlotte. Janine’s puppy, Duke, would sit in her lap while we talked sourcing strategies and argued about which Hamilton song was the best (obviously ‘Wait for It’). Jazz would send morning texts to make sure I hit the gym. 

My working relationships grew into friendships, and now that I was going through something difficult… I didn’t want to talk to my friends. I couldn’t talk to them.

Ultimately, that feeling faded when I realized those friendships weren't going anywhere. Even though I didn’t always respond that first week, I still felt the support from Heather’s texts, the voice notes from LeAnn, and the calls I’d decline from Jeremy. And when I was ready, they were still there to answer.

I felt like I lost my identity.

LinkedIn was my first job where my mom knew what I did. I remember her forwarding this 60 Minutes’ episode featuring LinkedIn’s Chief Economist, Karin Kimbrough, to her friends. She'd tell them “my son works there.” (As anyone with immigrant parents understands, that’s as close to “I’m proud of you” as I’m ever going to get.)

Throughout my career, I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome, which was amplified when I joined LinkedIn. For the longest time, I was fueled by self-doubt, but there, that slowly started to change. I was promoted twice in my two years, and as I started to find success, my self-doubt slowly morphed into self-belief. Belief that maybe, just maybe, if I keep working hard enough, I could be enough.  

Then one Monday morning, my world was shattered. I found it impossible to pick up all the pieces. I knew I had to separate my personal-identity from my work-identity, but it was complicated because they were now so interconnected.

Honestly, I’m still working on figuring that part out. I don’t have the answers yet, but that’s OK. At least I know where to start. 

So why is this so hard? It’s because when I lost my job, I felt like I lost everything. My confidence. My friends. Myself. And I tried to bypass that emotional toll by immediately distracting myself with searching for a new job.

Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut here. This isn’t simply about a job search - it's also about dealing with loss and learning to embrace change.

So that’s what we’ll be covering in upcoming newsletters. Sure, we’ll discuss things like job search strategies, interview advice, and how to pivot your career. But we’ll also talk about the hard parts that are rarely acknowledged - things like how to stay motivated, deal with your finances and take care of your physical & mental health.

Because I’m quickly learning that it all starts there.

You can’t move forward until you look back. 

And now that I have... I'm able to see that just because you lose something, doesn’t mean you lose everything. 

If anything, you’ll find that only the real things remain.

So for those of you that have already processed or just want to skip ahead (trust me, I understand) - here are a few resources to help get started on your job search:

• Here's a free resource that dives even deeper on how to use ChatGPT for resumes, interviews & even thank you notes. Thank you to Andrew Altschuler & Jillian Dresher for creating and Jamila Ma for connecting us!
• Jobseeking is Hard Newsletter:  Adam Karpiak is one of the first voices on this platform that really resonated with me. My favorite part of his newsletter is that he answers reader questions each week. Thank you to Kate Gagnon for the recommendation!
• Wonsulting : I came across this company through Megan (O'Meara) Jacobson and I love the actionable tips and resources that Jonathan Javier & Jerry Lee 💡 provide. They also have a cool ResumAI by Wonsulting feature that I’m looking forward to trying out as well.

In the next edition of The Path Forward, we’ll be talking about how to ask and accept support from your network (from someone that hates doing both), and we’ll finally get to what Matt Damon has to do with all of this. See you in 2 weeks!