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How to Be Ready to Lose Your Job

6 min readOct 15, 2018

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Credit: cosmaa/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Last year, I lost my job when the owner of the website I worked for shuttered it over a union dispute. He had been threatening the shutdown for some time, and though we didn’t know for sure what was going to happen, the air in the office had been heavy for months with pre-layoff anxiety.

Staff jobs in journalism were shrinking long before the shutdown, and to me, the prospect of freelancing in perpetuity seemed untenable. As a single woman with no debt, dependents, or significant health issues, I was in better shape than most, but I still had to make rent.

If you’re in the workforce long enough, there’s a chance that, at some point, you’ll get fired or laid off.

There was also an emotional toll. My work made up a significant piece of my social life, and it was lonely not having my friends and co-workers around me on a regular basis. My job was tied intrinsically to my identity — it was jarring, to say the least, to no longer self-identify based on my occupation.

If you’re in the workforce long enough, there’s a chance that, at some point, you’ll get fired or laid off. “Things are not the way they were when our grandparents…

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Published in Forge

A former publication from Medium on personal development. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Rebecca Fishbein
Rebecca Fishbein

Written by Rebecca Fishbein

Rebecca Fishbein is a writer in Brooklyn & the author of GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO PEOPLE YOU HATE, out 10/15. Find her on Twitter at @bfishbfish.

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