I feel like a meme from the Golden Girls "Picture this...Feb 19th, 2008...."
It was Democratic primary day in Wisconsin. A Tuesday. I was working as an account executive for a local ABC Television affiliate. My only plan for the day aside from work was to vote after work and the following day Jeff would come up (he used to be able to "work from home" one day a week and he chose Thursdays so that he'd come up Wednesday night, work from my apartment Thursday so that we could have a middle of the week night together before driving down for Thursday night bowling and then I'd see him again either Friday or Saturday. I think that's when I knew he loved me for sure- when he started doing that 90 minute drive in cold January Wisconsin winter in the dark just to see me for like 4 hours.) ANYWAY - bam! I was fired that day at around 4:30pm. Man do I wish they had done it in the morning instead of spending the day working but I digress.
Looking back, I totally get why they did it. Back the previous summer US Cellular had gone national so I had lost them as my biggest regional ad agency client. They brought in over $800 a month of my paycheck and over $325,000 a year to the station. It was not my fault that they went national but I was told I would need to "step up" and bring in at least $50,000 in new business to make up for it (new local biz was paid at 20% commission so would be the equivalent in my paycheck of the 3% I got from US Cellular). I needed to step up because to get by from the US cell move, they were supplementing my income from various places as a "favor" to this shock instead of my 100% commission just suddenly being $800 lower.
Well if you remember the economy in 2008 - you remember it was the start of the crash. And one of the first expenses companies cut are things deemed "unnecessary" like advertising. Especially locally. So I after over 6 months I hadn't come close to pulling in the 50k in local business I needed. And I was the only non-Wisconsinite sale person so I think they thought I always had one foot out the door anyway. And I had been dating a man from my home town for almost 8 months now and it was getting serious. So I was the easiest thing to cut for them to tighten their budgets during the downturn and forthcoming recession.
That said. It was devastating to me. At this point I had worked in TV for over 7 years at three stations around the country. I had more than tripled my salary in that time. I had won an "employee of the month" at my first station for having the most new local biz in a month ever. TV ad sales was my identity. But truth be told I was burnt out for the last year even before US Cellular pulled its ads. I was losing hair from the stress of the 100% commission. I drove with a dictaphone so I could record billboards I saw or radio ads I heard. I slept with a note pad next to me because I would dream of work and things I needed to remember. I also developed a rare eating disorder called Night Eating Syndrome NES (if you're really curious, look it up but I dealt with this off and on for years during high stress and would eat up to half my daily calories in my sleep often waking 3 to 5 times between 11pm and 6am and felt the need to eat in order to fall back to sleep). The stress was a bit all encompassing except for Jeff. I slept thru the night on nights when he was with me. So while we'd only been dating 8 months, he was my first phone call after filling a box and doing the walk of shame out of the building to my car. Not my parents. (clue number whatever that he was my whole heart).
I do not remember how quickly he said "lets move in together" as the next day, hell the next week or two, were a blur. But I know he suggested it sometime that first few days because I learned I could get out of my lease, researched and found us an apartment (he was moving out of living with his parents to live with me), rented a Uhaul, and had my brother and a friend help Jeff and I get everything out of that apartment to our townhouse rental all in 17 days. Looking back I was so worried (what if I'm uprooting my life for someone where it doesn't work out? Do I even really know him from 2-3 days a week?) I had never lived with a man. Would my parents be disappointed I was quote "living in sin"? Seven days later he proposed. On March 15th it will have been 13 years since I said yes to my best future, I just didn't know it yet. I couldn't imagine it at the time but really getting fired was probably the best thing that could have happened as it pushed me off a cliff I don't know what it would have taken for me to jump off of voluntarily.
Sometimes we laugh about how far we've come from that first year living together. Turns out we really are so alike that living together has been a breeze. And the only fights we ever really had were those first few years when I was mentally adjusting going from corporate world (and making a hella lot of money) to being a part time hourly worker at various rando jobs. Like I said, I used to think my job was my identity. But it turns out when people say "do what you love" don't know that it can sometimes stress you out to no end because you care almost too much. And if you lose it, then you lose yourself. And instead- doing something semi-menial that at the end of a shift I can completely forget about and live MY life. Not live to work. I had to find out who I was (or remember it was there all along since before I got the jobs). Again, I know it's a privileged situation being that my husband's job and love for me lets me to this. My mental health is so thankful for that love.
Sometimes I miss the TV world. Sometimes I miss having a job I was proud of. Sometimes I still deal with "shame" of being an hourly employee somewhere. But then I remember how good I've got it. And just revel in the gratitude that this life thru a series of chance happenings stumbled into my lap.
Edit to add: The reason I remember the specific day (and I had to look up the actual date) was because after I was fired and talked to Jeff, I did call my parents next and my dad asked me "what were you planning to do tonight?" and I said, go vote for Barak Obama in the primaries. And he said - "I really think you should do that. It will make you feel at least a little better." So I did. I drove straight to my polling place, placed my vote and a little over 8 months later he became the best president of my lifetime. So there's that too. If had been any other Tuesday night I'm not sure I would remember aside from it was February.
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