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Free at last; getting fired doesn't have to turn your world upside-down - Abstract

Men's Fitness, Dec, 1998 by Michael Das

When my boss broke the news that I was laid off from my job, my initial reaction was predictable: I panicked. Dizzy head. Lumpy throat. Pit in the stomach. The whole lineup of nasty feelings pulsed through me as my recent working life passed before my eyes.

The brief recap: The management of a small high-tech company had recruited me hard to develop and manage a new department, and I was thrilled with what it was offering: a solid salary, ample stock options, a regulation-size basketball court on the premises, free pizza and a selection of domestic and imported beer for lunch every other Friday. Visions of a successful IPO and lunchtime hoops games induced drooling. A meeting with the charismatic CEO sealed the deal. "Where do I sit?" I asked as we smiled and shook hands firmly.

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Five months of nine-hour workdays later, I sat down with my boss again. After some awkward small talk about Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova's, uh, form, he explained that, due to the client's budget cuts, the company no longer needed my "skill set." Or maybe he said that the client through the project should go in a different direction. Or maybe he whispered that the client had had a crazy change of heart; instead of building business here in the U.S., it was donating funds to help the Chinese build that big dam on the Yangtze. He probably spoke to me slowly and clearly, but I couldn't keep his voice from fading in and out. It was my first time losing a job, and I felt numb and worthless.

I pulled myself together enough to negotiate a decent severance. My boss and I mirrored each other with fake smiles and shook hands a final time. "Good luck," he said. "I'm sure you'll find a great job and look back someday and think that this is the best thing that ever happened to you." His attempts to bright-side me pissed me off, but I kept my cool. I said my goodbyes to my coworkers, grabbed a few personal items and walked out the door. It was a Friday, about half past noon.

Season in the sun

By 1 p.m., I could see that my boss might have been a visionary - just not the way he intended to be. See, it wasn't just any Friday. It was a clear blue Southern California summer Friday, the kind of day that causes tax accountants from Minnesota to pack up their lives and move into ocean-view condos out west. It was also the kind of day that tends to neutralize panic. In the car on my way home, the fog began to clear from my head. I had a severance check in my pocket. I had a little "just in case" money stashed away. I was eligible for unemployment benefits. It was a nobrainer: If Italians and Germans could vacation for six weeks each year, I thought, I could certainly take the summer off. I turned my car around and headed for the beach.

One leisurely afternoon on the sand was followed by regular daylong body-boarding excursions. I quickly improved both my riding form and my sunscreen-application technique. When I wasn't at the beach, I got excited about trivial things, like sleeping without setting my alarm clock and visiting the post office during off-peak hours. I stayed up late with impunity watching David Letterman and Conan O'Brien and USA Up All Night movies starring former members of the Brat Pack. It was like being in college again, but without having to attend classes. Call it Heaven 101. My friend Dan even gave me an anti-superhero nickname: Unemployed Man.

I know what I did last summer

My days left me free to do whatever I wanted. I love to read, so I would devour the L.A. Times front to back. Sometimes I chased it with the New York Times, just because I could. One weekday morning, post-newspaper, I walked to the local Barnes and Noble to browse through the business books. (Could I, somehow, make a career out of reading all day?) As the escalator carried me upward, I heard a familiar voice. I spun around on the steps.

"Nora!" I yelled from between the first and second floors.

She hesitated, then whirled and looked up at me with the guilty face of the proverbial five-year-old caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. "Mike?" she said. Relief spread across her face. "You scared the hell out of me." I used to work with Nora and, because she had called in sick that day, she thought for an instant that she'd been busted. We laughed.

My life was one giant sick day, minus the fear of getting caught. Reading, bad TV, beach. Rinse and repeat. Then my Dad interrupted my newly minted schedule. He called and asked if I could come over to help dean out the garage. What could I say? No, Dad, I've got to sleep in all week and spend all day reading about the stock-market crisis. I heard a sinister voice in my head: Unemployed Man, I've foiled your devious leisure plans!

For days we excavated the junk that had piled up over the years. Half-full cans of paint. Books and school papers. Old soccer balls and uniforms. Sifting through our family history, we began having some of those sappy father and son reminiscences depicted in made-for-TV movies. Remember when you coached my soccer team and we made it to the playoffs? Remember when we all painted the house? Remember when all this crap wasn't here and you could actually park the car in the garage? When we came across some old World War Il propaganda posters, we decided go see Saying Private Ryan. It was the first time we'd gone to a movie theater together in six years.

Free at last; getting fired doesn't have to turn your world upside-down - Abstract

Men's Fitness, Dec, 1998 by Michael Das

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