Jeremiah Tolbert

1. It doesn’t get any eas­ier the sec­ond time. This is my sec­ond lay­off in six months.  I told myself, once I had secured my most recent job, that I had been through the worst that could hap­pen and sur­vived it.  It was like a badge of honor at that point.  I thought that if I had to do this again, I would han­dle it much bet­ter because I would know.  But each lay­off hap­pens under unique cir­cum­stances.  I didn’t count on being job­less in the worst econ­omy since the Great Depression.
2. How hard you work and how impor­tant you feel doesn’t mat­ter.   It doesn’t mat­ter if you think you are immune because Project X, Y, and Z relies on your crit­i­cal skills.  It doesn’t mat­ter if you’re a hard worker, or the most skilled at some­thing, or any of that.  Your com­pany isn’t mak­ing money and you’re a bur­den to it, so it cuts you loose.  Your ser­vice, your ded­i­ca­tion, just doesn’t come into play.
3. Trust your first instincts.   After the first round of lay­offs, I had a feel­ing that I couldn’t shake, even all the way up until a cou­ple of weeks ago.  I was sure I was going to lose my job at any moment, that a lay­off was com­ing.  Teammates and bosses assured me that wasn’t the case.  Ultimately, their instincts were wrong and mine were right.  After the first round, I should have pol­ished my resume and got­ten to work look­ing for a new posi­tion imme­di­ately.  I should have lis­tened to myself and antic­i­pated the worst–moved back home to live with my par­ents, and dra­mat­i­cally reduced our expenses.
4. No mat­ter how many peo­ple tell you it’s not your fault, that it’s hap­pen­ing to lots of other people–it doesn’t help.  Especially if you have a ten­dency to ques­tion your self-​​esteem as much as I do, this kind of event will make you ques­tion your worth as a per­son.  Thoughts like “If I was truly any good at what I do, I would have been hired by a com­pany that wouldn’t be suf­fer­ing” will run through your head.
5. I’ve lost hope in the new White House admin­is­tra­tion.   I was lis­ten­ing to the radio early this morn­ing.  I can’t sleep very well right now so I was dri­ving to the park to try and take pic­tures.  I real­ized that I am no longer thrilled at the win of the Democrats.  All signs point to busi­ness as usual.  A lot of money is going to get handed out and peo­ple like you and me won’t see a dime of it.  Look at Merill Lynch.

I’m tak­ing the week­end to try and come to terms with this.  I’m mak­ing a list of the belong­ings that I can sell to raise our sav­ings buffer as much as pos­si­ble.  If any­one is inter­ested in an xBox 360, a Nintendo Wii, drop me an email.  I’m grow­ing more cer­tain I am going to sell off all of my cam­era equip­ment.  My cam­era body alone is worth more than a month’s rent.  When I think about it and try to deter­mine if I could use that body to make that much money even over a six month period, I know the answer is no.  So I sup­pose now more than ever, it’s time to put aside child­ish things.  Maybe one day I can buy another cam­era and pur­sue my dream again.  Right now, the cold real­i­ties make dreams an impossibility.

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