One More Time

I read the email subject line and immediately my stomach rumbled. “Editorial assignments changing,” it said. Let’s talk over the phone, the text of the email said. You don’t go through two layoffs without knowing what the endgame will be.

 

To be honest, I’d been anticipating the email for quite some time, ever since the company offshored some of their content creation to the Philippines. (I kid you not.) Then, they slashed my hours. Then, the criticism of my copyediting (mistakes all the copy editors made and worse, but somehow I was singled out). Then came the near fatal blow — I was assigned busy-work duties more suitable for an intern. So, yeah, I knew the gig was soon up. But I figured I’d string it along as long as I could for the money. Always for the money.

So when I was told my editing duties would be taken over by a computer program (I kid you not), I wasn’t surprised. The boss offered me writing assignments…for extremely low pay and very high volume (100 press release rewrites per week for $3 each). If I could write that fast (I don’t), I couldn’t do that and my other content marketing jobs (for higher pay). So I had to refuse. After the way I was treated why would I want to work for that shabby outfit anymore? It wasn’t just me who thought my treatment was undeserved; the former editor (she quit, smart lady) I worked closely with wrote that I “shouldn’t have been treated that way.” I’m not saying I didn’t make mistakes, but I was punished more harshly for them.

So once again, I get booted from a job. Albeit a freelance, part-time job, but a layoff by any other name.

I worked for this company for nearly two years, always willing to work extra hours when asked. (And where did that get me?) I liked getting paid weekly, though. With my other freelance jobs more tentative and less steady, I knew I’d have money in my bank account to grocery shop every Friday. Now? Well, I can only hope my other two freelance jobs can make up the difference. I’m not so sure.

It also gave the sometimes unstructured life of a freelancer a semblance of structure: writing in the morning, editing in the afternoon. Now, that's gone, too.

But I don’t feel angry. I feel sad, and nostalgic, anxious, worried about my ever-dwindling financial stability. It’s also a bitter reminder of my other two layoffs and the emotional trauma I apparently have yet to recover from. I never had a deep reservoir of self-confidence, but what little there ever was is completely gone now. Forever, I think.

It’s also a reminder of the impermanence of life. Jobs, relationships…all fleeting and gone in an instant and beyond our control. Our lives totter on sand, not steel, yet we cling to the illusion of permanence as a shield against Bad Things Happening. It doesn’t work that way. Bad things happen anyway, and we clump through the dark to find another path.

We try to grab hold of things, people, jobs, yet are shocked when those objects turn out to be nothing more than projections of our own fear of loss. They’re really just 3-D holograms we can never touch or fully possess. We never really had them, so why should we be surprised when they are gone?