I lost my job, then came another new beginning
The first thing I remember about Lay-Off Palooza ‘24 was the unseasonably delicious Florida spring.
Perfect for walking Rigby Floyd the Doodle at Silver Springs, reading long-unread books under the live oak, and staring into saturated blue skies and thinking, “What the hell just happened?”
That’s because the second thing I remember most about those tense-and-tearful three months is the morning my supervisor scheduled a surprise Zoom call. It was Feb. 15, the day after a lovely Valentine’s Day celebration that left me thinking, “I am the luckiest schmuck on the planet.”
I was doing well at my job. I worked for a large utility company that treated me well five years after rescuing me from a beloved-but-ailing newsroom. The money was good, my team was family, and the job had me doing something I never thought I could do: Solving customer problems, from moving unsightly transformers to replacing spoiled Korean food after an outage.
When I logged onto the surprise meeting that morning, my supervisor’s supervisor also popped up on the screen. Uh oh. There was no small talk, just a rehearsed review of corporate restructuring and a severance package. The words “lay off” or “sorry” never surfaced. It took me a few minutes before I realized, “Hey, I’m fired.”
What followed were three months of humility, weight loss, highs, lows, job interviews, dog walks, daily calls from outraged team members, daily calls from confused customers, and the realization that the words, “The job is yours if you want it” does not mean “The job is yours if you want it.” At one point, I was ready to pack my bags, as the only company that showed real interest was an Alaskan cruise line that wanted me as a shipboard photographer for six months out of the year for benefits-free chicken feed and a shared room with other crew members.
It would have been a dream job for a 23-year-old single me. But 56-year-old married me asked questions like, “Where would I get my meds refilled? Can I go to bed at 9 p.m.? Do the bartenders stock prune juice?”
Turns out, the marketplace does not value newspaper vets who spent the last 30 years writing about nose hair and litter boxes. Who knew?
Those who have been there know. It is scary, especially if you were banking on retirement in the coming years. You question your worth. You wish you would have earned your master’s degree. You wish you would have saved more money. You wish you paid more attention to … well, everything.
We were ready to move, as the jobs with promise were in bigger cities. My stomach churned at cleaning the garage, never mind moving. Plus, I loved my reading tree and all the memories of water-balloon fights and puppy chases and princess birthday parties.
Then came an email from a long-time friend and newspaper source who was looking for a writer at the University of Florida’s College of Engineering. The job was, basically, writing and taking photos of cool stuff at a premier research university. We’re talking robot dogs and concrete canoes and wind tunnels (with lasers!) and a 3D printer that can make A FREAKING HOUSE.
All at UF.
These days, I commute across the prairie to a small office in a 75-year-old red-brick building a stone’s throw away from The Swamp. I am doing what I love – writing and taking photos – in a diverse university setting.
Professors with more degrees than I have teeth will email: “David, can you write an article about my research on nanoparticle imaging/landfill-leachate mitigation/drones in agriculture/global disease forecasting via satellites?”
And I do. And sometimes it even makes sense. I even wrote a script for a video featuring UF’s robot dogs, although the handlers – both human – politely ignored my clearly written stage direction: “Have larger dog lift his leg as if peeing on the dean’s shoe.”
Point is, I am loving my Act III. I bounce out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and head north serenaded by a playlist packed with Blondie, The Monkees, Green Day and Fat Boy Slim.
This black-and-gold-bleeding UCF Knight is warming to Gator Nation. In fact, I am starting graduate school in the spring at UF. So now I am a college student again three years shy of 60. I fully plan to walk at commencement, even if I look like Mongomery Burns with a catheter bag dragging under my robe.
It is never too late for a new act. Especially one without rotten Korean food.
