On being made redundant

I was very recently made redundant. Not a sentence I ever thought I would write. If I’m honest, I’m still reeling from the shock of it. I can’t quite comprehend that it happened, let alone that I won’t be working with my team of colleagues anymore.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my career to be able to make choices for myself: deciding I didn’t want to become a lawyer, moving from EA to Employee Engagement and back again, leaving a role that was slowing eking away at my mental health without something to go to… the list goes on. This situation, however, is brand new unchartered territory. Logically, I know the next steps: take a moment to regroup, update my CV & LinkedIn (check and check), apply, interview, start over. And yet. The logical next steps don’t take into account the emotional fallout. The anger that this has happened, the grief, the feeling of having lost total control.

I’m discovering that gardening leave is quite a strange beast. You’re not working (unless requested to) but you’re not quite on holiday either. You have what feels like infinite time stretching out in front of you, but you also know that you’ll need to find a role, and quite quickly. Something I’m really struggling with is how to control my fizzy brain and the feeling that I need to do everything right now, 5 minutes ago preferably. I find myself writing lists of things to do at home, and things to do to make me more appealing as a candidate, but taking the easy next steps to start is much harder than I thought, and infinitely harder than having what feels like a never ending to do list at work but knowing exactly how to tackle it. Structuring my day as if it were that of my Principal works to an extent, but I’m also trying to remember to afford myself some grace.

A lot of this is tied to the shock of it all and the processing time that will be needed, but I also wonder how much is tied to the relationship we as assistants have with our roles. Our work is intrinsically tied with that of another, the success of that being as based on our personalities as it is on our abilities, our DNA woven into the office culture we build whether directly or indirectly. Unpicking those ties takes much more time than is needed to hand over a Mac, and is much more emotionally draining.

There are positives though, little glimmers: the time to explore “extra-curricular activities” to borrow a term from school, more opportunities to spend time reading with my dog next to me. Speaking of reading: I’ve always had a voracious appetite for books, but recently I can feel that shifting as well, away from just reading for pleasure to reading for education, comfort and support. My “to read” pile is steadily growing, but I’m also making my way through it much faster than I’m used to. Calendar Tetris replaced by critical assessment of what I’m consuming to keep me on my toes.

I now have the headspace to really think about what the next role could look like: Do I want to go back into a crazy entrepreneurial company where priorities change every 5 minutes (this is where I tend to excel) or do I want to challenge myself with something new in the form of an established corporate? Do I want to shift careers into that of client/relationship management? Or do I want to retrain completely? Being an EA frankly brings me too much joy to truly want to pivot, but I know the opportunity and possibility is there. The sticking point though is that whilst I have the headspace, I don’t really want it: I loved my job, I loved my team, my principal truly knew how to get the best from me. It’s a bit like a breakup in a way, you know you should move on, but sometimes you just don’t want to.

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