Positive Thinking: "I'm in the midst of a career change." (Translation: I got laid-off.)

It's been 60 days since I last had a job.

Typically, I like to acknowledge these unemployment milestones with a big bottle of wine and a self-loathing séance. But today I’m dedicating a blog post to it instead since a passive aggressive rant doesn’t lead to hangover hell (well, it doesn’t have to).

As part of my severance package, I was given the option to attend what was defined as "employment consultation." Once I reached the 30 days unemployed mark and had no leads to a job or any clue what I wanted to do with my future, I decided to take advantage of my former employer’s generous offer and seek help.

Upon arrival, I was directed to a room with about 15 people sitting around a conference table. We all had binders and nametags. Not only was I was the only person under the age of 40, but I was also the only one who did not have a career history with Sprint. (Although, I do have a phone history with Sprint. It was a torrid six years, full of dropped calls and roaming charges, which ended the day I called and said: your service sucks, I'm switching providers. So, I pretty much fired Sprint. For a brief moment I thought about sharing this with the group of former Sprint employees as a “funny how the world works” kind of story, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be received well so I kept it to myself.)

The consultant let us know that “let go” and “laid-off” were not positive terms, instead we were to say things like, “during my career change” or “I’m in a transition period.” Apparently using these positive terms would enable positive thinking, which would then, eventually, lead to a job. I wanted to raise my hand and ask if “terminated” was also considered a negative term but I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

After two hours I was still attempting to keep an open mind but I was losing patience with the approach the career services group was promoting. Then the consultant put a slide up on the screen that was a line graph titled: "Coping with a Change in Employment: The Range of Emotions" and I knew it was over for me. Keep in mind that 30 days prior to this I had been handed a small Xerox box to pack up my personal items and vacate the premises, so having someone show me my range of negative emotions as compared to my levels of productivity in the format of a line graph in a PowerPoint slide was not my idea of helpful at this point. As I contemplated this, I was sure that my emotion line was plummeting further into the Anger, Worry and Depression danger zone where productivity does not exist.

Looking at myself now, I think I’m somewhere between Resistance and Ambivalence on the Range of Emotions line graph. I think the positive side is that I’m getting really good at handling rejection, which is keeping me from getting to the ‘I’m Going to Punch You in Your Asshat Face’* point on the line graph. So, yeah, needless to say I’m still working on the power of positive thinking...

*Note: ‘I’m Going to Punch You in Your Asshat Face’ is not a real point on the Coping with a Change in Employment: The Range of Emotions line graph, although it should be.