There’s Never Been a Better Time to Stop Lying to Yourself: An Introduction

Anyone who’s been recently laid off now has the easiest explanation in the world.

When you’re at your next interview — and you will have another interview — the script can go something like this:

You say that everything was great, mention your raises, your promotion, and then how, through no fault of your own, the pandemic opened a trap door beneath you. Use a statistic about the drop in company revenue. Use another statistic to illustrate how the cost-cutting measures were broad. Mention that your whole department was cut. Finish it off by saying that now you’re just ready to get back to the way things were, and to doing what you love.

It’s simple and it’s safe and it will work. But I’d beg you not to do it — for these three reasons.

It’s obvious: Millions of other people are going to tell the same story, and you want to set yourself apart.

It’s boring: Excuses aren’t interesting. Vision and purpose and passion are.

It’s not true, because it doesn’t address or solve the problems you had before the pandemic.

Let’s be honest here. You probably weren’t that happy before this. You probably didn’t like your job that much. Maybe you even hated it. That’s OK to admit. Your boss can’t do shit about it anymore. And accepting it will help you make better decisions about what to do next.

Besides, you’re not alone. It’s well reported that more than 70 percent of Americans hate their jobs. Many of them feel trapped in environments plagued by paranoia, blame, spin, and all manner of manipulation cloaked in the buzz-speak virtues of hustle culture and TED talks.

Let’s not forget that four months ago, there was a lot of anger. There were a lot of people calling for change. Almost every industry was deemed “broken.” Education: broken. Health care: broken. The gig economy: criminally exploitative and a bellwether for social irresponsibility, widening income disparity, and deaths of despair.

Even if you were barely listening, again and again you could hear a rallying cry urging us to burn things to the ground and build something new.

And now it’s happening. People you know are dying. Businesses are shuttering, many of them forever. And as difficult, sad, and terrifying as this is, we will have to start over and build anew.

But we’re in danger of turning our backs on the changes we believed in a few weeks ago. We’re in danger of saying, “No, no, everything was great. Let’s just get back to the way things were.”

“I don’t want to throw away five years’ experience in growth marketing,” you might say. “I’ve spent so much time studying SEO optimization. I’m great at building spread sheets and slide decks.”

That’s not what you were saying in January. And there’s no upside to saying it now.

No one is hiring anyway. The government is tossing Monopoly money at the problem, hoping that people can deleverage. It’s an act of desperation. And if the government is that powerless, what employer is going to welcome you into the warmth of its embrace, hand you health benefits, and tell you everything is going to be all right?

No, anyone who’s shouting “We’re hiring!” right now is getting ready to exploit you because they think it’s a buyer’s market.

But it’s not.

This is not a buyer’s market or a seller’s market. No one has the upper hand. Because anyone you’re bargaining with is on fire, too. Which makes it the perfect time to stop lying to yourself, stop compromising, and decide who you want to be.

Yes, of course, do what you have to do to survive in the short term. Go help people. But don’t let this Black Swan moment take away your instincts, your values, and your ambition.

I can recall the fear of the Great Recession. People hated their jobs in 2008, too. And then around September 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, they quickly shifted from hating their jobs to feeling lucky to have a job. They clung to their dissatisfaction, protected it. “I’ll change when things get better,” they said in 2010, then again in 2011, then again in 2012…. In 2018, many of them were still stuck. Many of them lost a decade of their lives treading water. Maybe more.

A few months ago, I spoke to a friend who’d been laid off from Esquire in 2008 and then rehired a few months later. “Every day,” he told me, “I think I could get fired. I’m just waiting.”

You have to ask, How much time are you willing to spend in a state of low-grade anxiety? How much of your life are you willing to barter for some uncertain sense of security?

Now’s not the time to wish we can go back to the way things were. Now’s not the time to ignore your discontent. Now’s not the time to forget how you’ve felt stuck in life amid soaring costs of living and stagnant wages.

If you travel to the depths right now and all you come back with is the belief that you should feel lucky to have a job, then all you’ve done is endure the pain and fear of this moment without taking the time to learn from your experiences.

No. Now’s the time — whether you’ve lost your job or not — to think about how you want to start over. Now’s the time to recognize it’s just as easy to get laid off from a job you hate than it is to get laid off from a job you love. That it’ll take just as much effort, and you’ll face just as much rejection, trying to replace the job you didn’t like than it will to pursue something you want to be doing.

Now’s the time to take note of the businesses willing to grind their people into the dirt, while blasting off e-mails to assure customers they’re “there for them in this time of uncertainty.”

Now’s the time to stop bargaining your values and dreams for some false sense of security. Now’s the time to resent how you once pandered to the highest paid person in the room, who laid you off anyway.

Because it’s the people who spend this time processing their past (and developing a clear vision of what’s next) who will stand apart from everyone else who’s just seeking safety, who’s hoping Chick-fil-A re-opens soon, and that football season starts on time.

The coronavirus has handed people an excuse for all kinds of behavior. People who wanted to drink more found a reason to drink more. People who wanted to throw some hate at a particular political group have lofted their Molotov cocktails. And the guy who wanted to lick cans of deodorant, well, he’s had his moment, too.

But perhaps the most important thing the pandemic has done is hand each of us an excuse to throw out all of our old excuses.

Whether it looks like it or not, this was the fire you’ve been asking for, so step up, bust out some marshmallows, and make some fucking s’mores.

Either that, or just shut up forever. Because if you’re not willing to make big changes now — if you’re going to wait for some safer, more perfect opportunity — then you probably never will.