How Losing My Job Helped Me Realize I Was Inauthentic
When my company let me know that I would be working remotely as the pandemic started to unfold, I was relieved.
I had just finished a week-long vacation in celebration of my birthday, spending time with friends and family, so stepping foot in an office was the last thing I wanted to do.
Despite most of the world spiraling into a panic, as a homebody, quarantine was a dream for me. But after a month of working from home, I was laid off.
I was working at a YouTube news channel in Los Angeles, living a life that I had always dreamed of, and it had all fallen apart. However, the crazy thing is that I was thrilled.
I couldn’t believe it. How could I be happy about getting laid off during a pandemic, especially from a company whose job offer I cried in joy over?
I was liberated because I felt trapped at a company with a toxic work culture where I never felt good enough as a content creator. My insecurities grew with every overly-critical remark made by my supervisors. My coworkers were also unwelcoming, making communicating with them hell as someone who has social anxiety.
In response to the stress, I coped by binge drinking every weekend and developing poor eating habits (shout out to Jack in the Box, it’s a lifesaver when you’re so fucked up that you don’t know what year it is).
It’s insane thinking that I had only been at the company for barely ten months and was already feeling like absolute shit on the inside and looked like it on the outside.
I became so depressed and miserable to the point that my parents offered to financially support me if I left my company to look for another job. So, knowing all that, what made me want to continue?
After moving back to my hometown in Oklahoma and getting some peace of mind from therapy, I realized that it was my own sense of inadequacy that kept me going.
I stuck with my job because I over-identified with having a career in media. I wanted to become “internet famous” by virtue of working at an established YouTube channel and gain the recognition I had always wanted.
Looking back, this meant I thought so low of myself that I based my self-worth on what I achieved at work. I sought validation from others by feeding off their reactions to my work.
When I’d read the comments on the videos I made at work, I was always anxiously anticipating a negative comment and I remember word-for-word the most critical remarks from strangers online.
My job was not healthy and I should have left earlier, but I didn’t because I am a master of rationalizing my own unhappiness. This logic is rooted in being enslaved to the thoughts and opinions of others as I was scared of people thinking that I was anything but extraordinary.
After this hell storm, I’ve grown and I practice trying to live a life that’s true to me and doesn’t involve the validation of others.
While I’ve been actively practicing living authentically, I’ve come up with some questions that you can ask yourself when you’re struggling to find a career/life path that speaks to your truth and only yours.
1. Would I still be at my job/in my career field if no one was around to see me?
As corny as it sounds, dance like nobody’s watching, metaphorically speaking. A job with a flashy title and great pay comes in handy when you’re impressing others, but that’s just toxic reasoning in itself.
I know that most of us would like to think that we don’t lead our lives that way. But based on what I’ve seen from recent college graduates who can’t help but post about their jobs in a “weird flex, but okay” kind of way, this advice is crucial.
Starting a career can be exciting, but you won’t have a long-lasting one if you’re going into it for the money or validation from the world around you.
2. Am I over-identifying with my job and ignoring my personal needs?
This one is huge for me because I used to hyper-focus on my job in order to ignore how lonely and isolated I felt on a daily basis.
Wake up, drive to work, go to the gym, go home, avoid housemates, and lay in bed while looking at Twitter and Tik Tok until midnight was my daily routine. I was empty and yearned for meaningful romantic and platonic connections, but it was easy to ignore if I just focused on my job.
By over-emphasizing and over-identifying with your job, you’re setting yourself up for failure because in the moments that you fuck it up, which is inevitable because you’re human, it hits harder.
Put it like this, imagine a full pizza was your life. If you ordered one that was three-quarters anchovies and only a quarter BBQ chicken — the superior pizza type — then you’d consider the pizza pretty bad.
The anchovies part of the pizza symbolizes work for me, making the pizza (my life) shit. For example, if the video I made wasn’t just right or if it didn’t get a high enough number of views, then I was crushed and I took that disappointment home with me.
Meanwhile, I could tell that my co-workers were confused by how upset I was about the little shortcomings in my work because most of them were able to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
3. Am I at this job because I am scared that what I want to do won’t pay the bills?
It’s hard wanting to take a lower salary when it’s becoming progressively more expensive to live, no matter where you are located. Still, there’s a point where we tend to focus only on the dopamine rush and the sense of security we feel when the biweekly paycheck deposits, but that only goes so far.
The worst feeling would be to know that you inhibited your own potential by not doing what you love just because you wanted to live in a nicer house or drive a Mercedes.
With a responsible mindset, you can live your life in a way that satisfies your personal and financial needs.
Taking my own advice, I honestly don’t know where the fuck I want to be as I am veering away from the idea of pursuing a career in media because it doesn’t fully speak to my personal truth.
What I am sure of now is that I don’t want to be working at some flashy start-up company in a big city that I can brag about to my friends.
If I would’ve asked myself a year ago what I thought of where I am now I would’ve probably said something on the lines of “bitch, you’re crazy! What are you doing?”
Living in the Bible Belt in less-than 20 degrees weather doesn’t sound like the most glamorous life, but I am enjoying my day-to-day existence way more than I ever did in sunny Los Angeles because I know how to live for myself.
Now, as I’m contemplating where I want to go in terms of my life and career, I am confident that I’m headed on the right path because I am looking for what speaks to me and not others.
