I recently found out that I am losing my job, although not a total surprise it’s still come as a bit of a shock.
I’ve been with the company for over 8 years, so the thought of having to leave and find a new job, especially in the current economic climate is daunting to say the least.
So when I finally got an email informing me that my position was at risk of redundancy and a meeting had been arranged to discuss it I felt sick.
In some respects though it has come as a bit of a relief, the last few months have been horrible, the two weeks after coming back from the Christmas break even worse, to a point where I wasn’t eating or sleeping properly, feeling like I was walking around in a little bubble not really knowing what was going to happen was a terrible feeling.
Of course it has its impact on family life – “You seem a little distracted” my wife said to me on more than one occasion. An understatement maybe, but as most of us know, having problems at work can impact on family life, something I was all to aware off.
I wanted to protect my wife from what I was going through, I certainly didn’t want it to affect my daughter, although probably too young at 20 months to understand what is really going on, she is does pick up on things.
After getting over the initial shock and upset, that I was indeed going to be made redundant I decided I had two options. Sit and feel sorry for myself or look on it as a new beginning, an exciting opportunity.
I chose the latter.
It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve remained positive, dusted of my CV and updated it, registered with some agencies and applied for some jobs.
To my surprise there was quite a bit of interest, I’ve lined up some interviews for this week and it’s given me a real lift.
The thing that keeps me going? The need to support my wife and daughter. My wife works incredibly hard looking after our daughter and working part time, I need to be able to “do my bit” and as the main earner in our family I have the added pressure of needing to pay the bills.
That’s OK though, it’s driving me forward. I don’t want my wife to worry, I don’t want my daughter to go without, I’ll do what I need to do.
I’ve got to take the positive out of it, redundancy isn’t the end of the world, deal with it, hundreds of people are going through the same thing right now. I’m in a position where I have a couple of options, being made redundant could be a good thing, it will allow me to progress my career, to further my skills, to meet new people, all of which needs to be seen as a positive thing rather than a negative.
So onwards and upwards, redundancy isn’t the end of the world, I just need to deal with it.
