Lay offs and Life

“Live your life by a compass not a clock.”– Stephen Covey

I am now three weeks out since being laid off due to a reduction in force after only four weeks working in the new position at the company. Needless to say, it came as a surprise and disappointment. The largest disappointment was that with this position I felt that I had finally arrived at a point in my career that I could really make a difference, leverage my knowledge, and expose my passion for information organization and access. As far as the surprise part goes, I am not sure anyone leaving a stable job to move their career forward would ever expect a company who had signed off on a new position only 4 weeks earlier would onboard you only to eliminate your position within weeks. I was fortunate enough to work those four weeks with incredible people and supportive leaders that have kept me in their fold and added me into the support of others affected by the reduction in force.

Now, let me get to the point of this post and the analysis of Stephen Covey's quote. When I had initially found this quote months ago, I thought I would use it in conjunction with one of my usual travel pieces, compass, travel, etc. But with this recent life experience, I realize that this quote relates to my life so much more beyond a direct reference to traveling and the impact travel has on ones life/life lessons (aka...my typical blog posts).

As mentioned previously, I felt that my career had finally arrived... time>clock>arrival. You would have thought that I would have learned previously that there is no set time to get from A to B (as...this isn't my first time related blog post...oh how easily we forget!). Ding dong! Here it is again! I have no regret taking the risk to advance my career despite this new challenge, I made that choice by following my internal compass. Now my compass is telling me that I am not off the path, I am on a detour, and a much needed detour at that. I have been waiting to make the X amount of money, building up X number of days to take time off, in order to do simple things like going home to visit Grandma and Grandpa, spending time with the precious new babies in the family, and just taking time for me to relax, reflect, and unwind.

I have spent that past few years, living by the clock. Clock in 8AM, clock out 5PM. That has been my day in and day out. These past few weeks, I've been living by the compass, spending two weeks re-discovering my home town (blog post to come on some of the great food and drinks!), traveling to regional areas that used to be regular day trips, spending a day at The Lake with family, and taking my mom to and from a doctors appointment in the pouring rain.

I've missed out on so much living my life "on the clock." Living like this has isolated me from living, numbing my sense of adventure. Despite the initial shock and disappointment, my lay off has offered me the opportunity to get back to letting my compass scream and shout rather than whisper, the compass that once had me dropping everything and flying off to Germany on my own, taking a career leap and moving across the country to Texas, allowing me to find my passion and go back to school for my masters degree.

Living by the clock I have survived, at the end of the day, I am OK. But when I have lived by the compass, I have thrived, and then too, I am still OK. Do I know what is next to come or when it will come? No, and that is okay because I will survive, I will thrive, and I will come out better in the end.