Week 10 Where I Am Ten Weeks After the Layoff

This is week 10 after being laid off.

So, this is the last episode for this whole "Oldpapa's Layoff Diary" series. Initially, this project was for me to process the layoff and to actually let myself know how I'm feeling. Sharing it with the public was because it helps me be accountable. And up until week 10, I have been doing this every week apart from the week I was traveling. So compared to all of my other content, this has been the most stable one.

So, sharing in the public, telling them I will be publishing each week, does help. Now that I've noticed that I'm completely out of the layoff mindset, which was probably around week 8, I gave myself two more weeks just because I like number 10 and to make sure that I'm actually actually out of it. I'm happy for those that were with me through the journey and shared some thoughts with me in the Instagram DMs. That's the fun thing about sharing online and publicly. Sometimes you have these unexpected interactions that lead you to the next unexpected thing.

I also took the time to reread from week 1 to week 9 to see where I am right now. And the process has been very cool, so let's summarize.

So weeks 1 through 3 were just pure processing. Apart from sorting through the documents for the layoffs, I was mostly just shocked to know the news. And then looking back, I'm really grateful that we had an alumni group. The randomness of that layoff and the people I got to talk to really helped me get through this first phase. Instead of going through the full circle of from being shocked, blaming myself on maybe what I did wrong, then getting angry at the company for doing this to me, and then finally letting go of everything and move on. It was just shocked and I flagged it as an unlucky event. End of story. So I'm really grateful that we had that group of people to process it together.

The next thing was, now that I know I'm laid off, who should I tell? I've told basically everyone around me except my parents. And reflecting back on that week, I was so sure that they would react negatively, but in reality I'm not actually sure how they react. But I guess we just had a wrong conversation at a moment I felt like I wanted to share the most. At that time, they were saying that you should be careful of layoffs if you're not hardworking. And I was definitely like, what the fuck is the relationship with hardworking versus being laid off? Like I, I'm just gone through it, like literally days ago. And now that the time has passed, I feel like, well, the timing has passed and I'm okay leaving it like that.

From the fourth week and onwards, I started to meet up with friends and started my May challenge. This is the challenge where I post an Instagram story about one thing that happened every single day in May. And because I do it each year, I can easily compare this year's May to last year's May. This helped me to better know that I'm just someone that is doing the same exact things. I love the same exact things. I still have the same exact hobbies. And nothing has really changed in me apart from that I don't work for a particular company anymore. It might sound pretty obvious, but if I was always in those emotions and did not document it, I could not have seen it more clearly like this.

Around the same time, I started doing website hosting for friends and some freelancing work. Currently, I've onboarded two clients and one is wrapping up. I also got to publish the remote listing that I said I wanted to do like six months ago.

Last but not least, I did get to travel a bit. The fun part. Japan was awesome and a much-needed reset. I really like the week 7 recording, if you haven't, go listen, where I got to practice storytelling about the trip. It's a brand new way than just self-reflection as I do each week here. Some hashtags for that week were Maid Cafe, Mt. Fuji, and Disneyland.

So that's it. This is me, week 10 after the layoff, and REALLY signing off.