Redundancy: Friend Or Foe?

Tuesday of last week I sat at my desk staring blankly at a computer screen for about 10 minutes at business reports I had absolutely no interest in. I was miserable, and I knew it. I’d been working in a job I had grown to hate over the last three years, and since discovering the world of online business recently I started to despise it even more, but it was still a means to an end. The job is remotely based, meaning I can work from anywhere in Europe pretty much, well paid and relatively straightforward. Basically, this is the perfect job for me while I grow my blog and save money, with a view to quitting ‘working for the man’ completely in September next year, so I had to keep going.

The only problem is this job is no longer mine, because last week I got made redundant. There’s not really any easy way to say that, that’s for sure. Hearing that there were cuts being made, and I was one of them was still shocking, even if I did see it coming. The problem was timing – knowing I didn’t have to work in something I hated anymore was a relief, but I was also panicked by the thought of having to find another job that didn’t allow me the freedom that this one had. I was torn.

I felt so ready to throw myself head first into this blog and my other website, but financially, I’m so not ready. If this had happened in 12 months time it would have been perfect, but life doesn’t deal in perfection so I’m trying to now make sense of the cards I’ve been dealt and move forward in the best was possible for me. I’ve had a million and one ideas run through my head in the space of only a few days – from moving to Thailand, to not going back to work and selling everything I own to survive, and finally to sucking it up and finding another job so that I can achieve my original goal of working for myself and becoming location independent in just over a years time.

You may be surprised to know that I’ve decided to go with the latter, and while the spiritual and spontaneous side of me sees this whole thing as some kind of sign and can’t bear the thought of going back to full time work, I stubbornly realised this morning that I’m an adult with adult responsibilities, and I have to take the hard road now to enable me to get to the easy one later. I know it’s not romantic, but I have to face up to the fact that this is the fastest way to get to where I want to be, hands down. If there were a few more grand in the bank and I was a few months further into monetisation of the blog then things could be different, but this is happening now, so it’s the path I must take.

While the roller coaster of emotion of the past few days has now been replaced with small amounts of apprehension, resistance and disappointment, on the whole I’m feeling a lot more positive about the path forward. Sitting here a week ago feeling helpless and apathetic wasn’t helping anyone, so while this has been a shock, maybe it’s the jolt I needed to get through the next few months, and help me smash my goals out of the blogging-ballpark by the middle of 2012.

I think there’s a lesson in here for everyone. No, not ‘be careful what you wish for’ as I was convinced of when walking out from receiving this news, but not to forget what your striving for and perhaps that going through a little bit of pain is not so bad if it means pleasure and freedom later on. I’ve also been remembering the old saying that ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’, so that is what I fully intend to do over the next few days and weeks as I look for my new job. By the time I’m finished I’m hoping there’s going to be so much damn lemonade that I’ll be selling it to the local supermarket for a profit! So here’s to everyone with goals out there, and doing whatever it takes to achieve them!

Photo Credits: Thanks to Pro-Zak (Attribution License)

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