A couple of months ago, I got made redundant.
It was unavoidable, and I am not going into why; suffice to say all parties involved found the process difficult and there’s zero malice or anger at all. I had done nothing wrong, I wasn’t pushed to the top of a queue based on absence or performance. It was just one of those things.
I’ve been on the other side of the table a few times in my previous life as a manager making tough decisions. I’ve been a foot soldier in companies that have made redundancies and escaped. This was the first time I’d ever been the actual subject of the redundancy. I always imagined I would handle it like I try to handle most things—stiff upper lip and all that—but it turned out that I learned a thing or two about myself.
I’m not a proud man. I’ve spoken before about issues others don’t feel comfortable discussing, such as mental health. Some of the funniest anecdotes I tell at parties involve me as the butt of the story, and I never feel particularly ashamed when I tell them. I don’t take myself too seriously, or at least I try not to. That made it even weirder that being made redundant was something that felt like a failure.
It turns out the one thing I am quite proud of recently is my recent career. One might say it is a self-made journey, from an anxious, stressed manager working 60 hours a week to someone with fingers in pies, multiple endeavours ongoing at once. I want people to think I’m a success, that I’m good at what I do. I had a few side projects ticking over, which were going okay, but I bloody loved my full-time job, the people and the tasks. When it ended, I went through a couple of stages.
The first was shame. I felt ashamed despite nothing being my fault. It felt like I’d failed, like the hard work I’d put in moving away from ‘Gary, the merchant manager’, had been wasted. It wasn’t true, but it felt awful. The first couple of nights I didn’t get a lot of sleep, and I didn’t want to tell anyone at all. Even as a 45-year-old man, when I first told Fe (my wife, for those who don’t know) I felt like I could have cried. It was about a week, as I worked my notice period that the feelings continued, and for a moment, I wondered if my health might even suffer.
After that came worry. I looked ahead to 2025; what would I do? Would I have to craft a CV again and send it out to merchants begging for a chance to once again turn to an 8-5, or whatever? Would I have to don a tie and do the things that previously drove me to be a poor version of myself, angry and disillusioned? I began to look at things I own, football shirts and programmes, and wonder if I’d sell those to stave off the threat of turning back to my old career for a month or two.
That was fear was extinguished (for now) when I sold one of my websites a week or so later, unconnected to my circumstances. I got an offer I couldn’t refuse that didn’t involve a horse’s head, and it gave me some security. I’m not quite sure where I’d be without that. I guess my circumstances are unique – some people get made redundant in an industry that is easy to stay in, but I have imposter syndrome anyway. I did apply for a freelance writer role at the first company I did link dev for, only to be told a previous editor had left a note on my file saying my work wasn’t up to scratch.
That hurt more than being made redundant! That company gave me a break in the industry, and I felt I had done well. I left of my own accord and even published posts for them on my sites afterwards. To be told I wasn’t good enough to be a writer, coming out of a job where I wrote, edited other’s work, and planned content across a whole team, was painful. It’s like being told you’re not good enough to work the tills at Tesco after leaving a job managing Asda.
It’s now almost two months to the day since I found out I didn’t have a job anymore. The road ahead is unclear; it’s like I’m heading somewhere with no sat-nav. I’ve got things bubbling away, and I’m making no decisions about full-time stuff until I absolutely have to. I know that’s a luxury, a luxury I have created for myself over the last couple of years through hard work, but one I’m sure not everybody can afford.
I wanted to write a piece about dealing with redundancy and practical advice for people, but I realised every situation is different. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach I can use to give advice, only my own experience. The future might be uncertain right now, but I’ve got through the shame, the failure, the worry and come to a place of acceptance. I never got angry; there was nobody to get angry at, which probably helped leave me where I am right now.
All I’d say is redundancy is not the end of your journey. It’s the end of a journey, and the negative feelings are perfectly normal. It’s a bit like the stages of grief, missing people I worked with, missing the old routine that, at the time, felt like just that, routine.
Whatever happens, I know I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and be healthy. The sun will (probably) shine, and that is enough to keep me going right now.