When Your Career is on Life Support, Sometimes it’s Best to Pull the Plug

“What about your career?” They said.

They have been my bosses, my friends, my relatives, and some complete strangers who just feel the need to voice their opinions. They have been confused that a young woman who just jumped from a big advertising agency, to an even bigger marketing company could simply be pulling the plug on what outwardly appears to be a smooth career trajectory from elite college graduate to a career headed towards more money, fancy job titles, and the cushy world or corporate credit cards and personal assistants.

But the truth is far less glamorous, and perhaps, a little more relatable. The truth is that my career has been a walking corpse for the last year and a half. The truth is that I have lied to the faces of many a person, told them my decision to leave my ad job – a job that I actually loved and was good at – was my own choice. I told them that my decision to take a job at a massive corporate marketing company was for the money, and the relaxed hours. And I’ve told  those same people that I was moving my career in a new direction, that it was done intentionally. But that is not the truth. Here is what really happened:

In early 2016 I was given the opportunity to start working as an art director at the advertising agency where I had worked as a video editor for three years. I was told that this would be a trial assignment, and that if I did well I’d be given a job as an art director. I worked so hard. I remember waking up at 4am to put in a few hours work before going into the office where I’d sometimes work until 10 at night. I held down my new duties and retained my old job, holding the edges of my career together with sheer force of will. For close to six months I worked two jobs within the same company. But it worked! The clients loved the work, they wanted to buy and produce some of our best ideas. I was thrilled! I bought champagne, I told my boyfriend that I’d done it, and that just like everybody told me, I saw that working hard gets you ahead.

But then before we could move into production, our client had a massive internal shake up. People lost their jobs, the project folded, and I was back at square one. I was disappointed, but grateful to still have a job, no complaining from me. So I started again, and my agency was all too eager to allow me to work myself into the ground. After all, it’s not like they were paying me more money. And while it would be easy to paint myself as the victim here, the reality is that I knew I should have left in the summer of 2016. But I loved the people I worked with, I liked the work I was doing, and I was being told that if I just hung in there I’d get the career I was so desperate to have. I was young, and hungry, and blind.

For the next 10 months I worked hours and hours of overtime, what would amount to two full months of OT hours in the span of a year. Two jobs, one company. I tried to launch new initiatives within the company, I tried and succeeded in impressing the most senior members of my agency. And then I got in my car and cried on the drive home a lot of nights. I took on freelance work to boost my flagging salary, I was passed over for promotions and raises because I wasn’t fully in anyone’s department and nobody took responsibility for me. I was a young woman in man’s world and I didn’t know how to speak up for myself, yet.

And finally, finally, after nearly a year and a half I saw the writing on the wall and I told them they either needed to offer me an art director position, or else I’d be stepping back into my editor role. Our talent manager tried to feed me a line about budget and getting the money for my salary but I wasn’t having it. It took me nearly two years to stand up for myself, but I finally did and it felt awesome! I went back to working under my old boss, I tried to launch a new production arm, I tried for the zillionth time to prove my worth, I continued to impress the leadership of my company, and I received the best review of my career. All of which I’m still very proud of. I was planning on leaving for the PCT in 2018, and I resolved to grit it out until then, be helpful, be the best worker bee I could be.

And then they laid me off.

I thought I was going into a meeting to negotiate a raise and instead they canned me and told me they hired my job out from under me to a 20-something dude from Dallas – talk about reading the room wrong!

And I never told anybody but my closest of close friends and family because all I could see was my personal failings. I was so humiliated. Laid off at 29. Who get’s laid off at 29? Probably lots of people, but nobody talks about it – I didn’t want to talk about it – because we’re so career oriented that I couldn’t bring myself to tell everybody how I’d failed.

When this new job offered me a decent salary, a close location, and a good title, I jumped at it, even though I knew that it wasn’t a good fit. My highest priority was getting to the start of the PCT in 2018 and getting out of LA. What I told everybody was a career leap was really more like grabbing a tree branch to keep yourself from falling off a cliff. I know that I’m lucky to have landed on my feet, that many people who lose their jobs have a far more precarious financial situation than I, and I am grateful that things turned out so well for me. Truly.

So, what about my career? Won’t hiking the PCT leave a big gap in my resume? What will employers think about a woman who gets a new job, works there for six months and then up and quits to romp through the woods for half a year?

Frankly, I don’t care.

I spent the last three years chasing the approval of those who told me my career should be my everything, and I have nothing to show for it.

Beyond giving corporate life the big middle finger in 2018, I’m also resolving to be more open and honest about it. Because if everybody was just a little more honest about work and life and the lie that work/life balance is a thing, then maybe we wouldn’t feel so hurt and scared when our careers fall apart. At least we’d know we’re not alone. Maybe you’re 23 and getting a degree you hate to appease your parents, maybe you’re 40 and you’ve just been canned from your dream job – the job you built your identity around- maybe you’re 60 and you’ve just been let go and woken up to the rude reality that your company never cared about you as a person. Whatever your reality, I bet you’re not alone.

Perhaps hiking the PCT will be the single worst thing I could do for my career, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe placing our worth and identity at the center of what we do 9 to 5 is the worst thing we can do for ourselves. So I’m electing to try something new. I’m done believing that if I just put enough hard work tokens into the career machine that a shiny badge a validation and corporate success will pop out. I want to get out of a city where the first and most important question is: where do you work? And I’m ready to give this irreverent dirtbag life a try.

What’s the worst that can happen, they fire me?