Why Losing My Job Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

*Ding* New Calendar Invite: Photo Catch-up, 4th floor.

It was weird that our weekly photo team meeting was moved upstairs, but sometimes meeting rooms are busy I guess. The rest of our team was up on the 4th floor, so it was not too out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary was when we walked into the room, we were not greeted by our boss, but by our team's Human Resources (HR) rep.

I loved my job. It was my first "real job" out of college and was almost too good to be true. This Fortune 500 company came out of nowhere and chose me to take photographs at important and expensive events with the CEO and owner of the company. I had almost zero photo experience. Truly, in my interview "my portfolio" was an Instagram page I started maybe a month before, with some photos I took of my sister with a DSLR I had received as a gift in high school. The person in the position before me was not working out and the team needed help fast - I showed up at the right place, at the right time.

From then on I absorbed as much as possible. I was shadowing my boss taking event photos and headshots every day. She was teaching me to retouch a photo properly, with a literal step-by-step guide, and I still turned around and asked her about a thousand questions a day. (Shout out to her for not throwing something at me every time I made her take her headphones off. xoxox.)

After about three months, which was what my contract was for - they offered me a full time position. The next week, my boss looked me square in the eye and said, "You can say no, but would you do me a favor and go shoot this event in the Bahamas for me." I laughed and very sarcastically said, "Yea, I'd love to go to the Bahamas and shoot an entire week long 3,000 person event by myself." Then, she very non-sarcastically booked my flight.

I'm telling you - this job was a DREAM. I was traveling all over the world taking photos of events that allowed me to learn a million things a minute. My coworkers were awesome. I had never been around so many creative, nice people in one room before and it was inspiring every day. I met some of my best friends at this job. I became the photographer I am today.

*Enter villain*

About two years in, we got re-organized, which in this case was just a fancy way of saying we were under new management and people were about to get fired.

This was not the end of my story unfortunately, it was the beginning. The new management "let go" of 80% of our team and brought in his own people, almost all of whom conveniently used to work at his old company.

This kind of thing happens. It was a hard pill to swallow, but businesses change. I was just happy to still be there. I mean, I was a new person once and that worked out okay. These people could be great.

This is where the fairy-tale really starts to fade. Over the next year or so we saw a lot of unjust things. Nasty firings, bosses throwing teammates under the bus, screaming matches in the workplace, people lying directly to clients faces, price gouging. I have no animosity towards the company itself, I still hold this company in very high regard and recommend them to this day, but some of the individuals I worked with specifically... are not people I choose to network with anymore.

Some things were reported to HR and a few disciplinary actions were dolled out - you know, like the accused parties had to "attend a week long, paid, 'management training' in the city (Los Angeles, Chicago) of their choice." Turns out, the HR rep and the person in charge of the department were old friends.

Eventually after a year of anxiety ridden days and sleepless nights, the Photo Team got that fateful calendar invite where we were told that our team was being dissolved. It was a "business decision" to cut the "very expensive" two person photo team, and replace it with a... different two person photo team and a batch of new thousand dollar cameras.

When I tell this story, I try really hard not to sound bitter and like a scorned, fired employee, because that's not what I am. I am a very rational person, who was given the opportunity to re-apply for my position. I was not fired, and I understand real business moves. Jobs are shuffled every day in this world, sometimes you get the short end of the straw. But this particular situation was truly awful. The way it felt, the way it was handled, how long it took. After we heard this news we had to continue working with the same people for a month and half. In fact the very next day, we both had two very expensive, high profile, off-site shoots that we had to take care of. Our boss stopped sitting next to us, she didn't speak to us, or look at us. Did I mention our official last day was set to be Christmas Eve? Every day we had to go into work and smile at clients and help them feel comfortable in front of a camera and pretend that we weren't falling apart inside.

I was depressed. I was angry. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. It was so unexpected and this job really meant the world to me. It's like someone pulled a rug out from under me when I wasn't looking and I just fell - for what felt like days. I turned into a really mean and negative person. I wasn't myself, and I wasn't fun to be around. I lost this seemingly perfect job, not because I wasn't a good employee, not because I was bad at my job, not even because of an unfortunate business decision, but because I stood up for myself and my friends and someone was threatened by that.

At this point, we are thirteen paragraphs in and the title of the post "Why Losing My Job Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" hasn't started to make sense yet. My goal with this post is to, therapeutically write this story down for myself, but to also write it down for someone else who might be going through a similar situation. Whether you are furloughed or wrongfully fired, or you quit to get out of a bad situation - it gets better. Health insurance is important and I AM NOT recommending people just leave situations without a contingency plan. But... if you continue to stay in an environment that makes you hate waking up in the morning, and truly living for that 5 o'clock punch out - that health insurance won't even matter because you are going to slowly kill yourself with stress and there isn't a fool-proof medication to reverse what happens to your body when you are under that much mental and/or physical pressure.

After I heard the news, I applied to - what felt like - every job on LinkedIn. I did not read one description. If the title had the words 'photo' or 'marketing' or 'social media' in it - I applied.

Going through interviews was where I felt my change. This is where losing my job in that way, became a good thing. My confidence sky rocketed. It could have easily gone the other way. I could have thought, "Poor me. Nobody is going to want to hire me. I'm bad at my job, I just got let go." But instead, luckily, my mind said, "What's the worst that could happen in this interview? I don't get the job? Okay, then I'm literally in the same place that I was in and I'll move on to the next one." "What if I get a crappy job that I don't really want? Then I take it and move up the ranks like I did before, or I don't take it and keep moving." It wasn't that I didn't care, I just wasn't scared.

Once I did finally accept a new job (at an unbelievably wonderful company) I let go of a lot of my old anxieties, too. My new team was amazing. I made more progress there in a month then I did in a year at the old company. I had coworkers who trusted me, who appreciated my work, and that I wasn't nervous to be around. The fact that I was thrown off when people said 'good morning' or 'good job' to me, gave me this somewhat sad realization that as seemingly perfect as that last job was, it was doing a lot more harm than it was good. I got this boost of confidence because I was genuinely happy, and in the back of my mind, whenever I was nervous about a design or a meeting, I thought, "What's the worst they could do? Fire me?" I had already been through it. I knew what would happen, I would know how to deal with it and I would stand back up again. I'm now a year and a half into my new job and, listen - Mondays are still a struggle, but every other day of the week, I'm excited to go in and create and see my coworkers and learn something new.

The point is, out of that horrible situation I stood back up and climbed out of the dark hole I had fallen in to. And now, no matter the situation, I remember the feeling of standing back up and I know I can get through it. Going through something tough like losing a job in a nasty way, was really good for me. Bad situations shape us. You can let it shape you into something better, or something worse.

And I acknowledge that job loss is not the end of the world. Overall, I lead a very cushy life. I had parents to fall back on, I got a new job relatively fast, and nobody was relying on me financially. There are far worse situations in the world and far more injustices than people ever even hear about. I am very aware of the privileges I have been given and I am thankful and hope to use that privilege to help or make a real change someday. But my hope for now is that the next time you are in any situation that feels like the end of the world... you find the one thing that is going to help you grow. Whether it's confidence, strength, awareness, resilience - find something that will make you grow, grab on to it, and use it to help you stand back up.