Work

This is a story of small miracles. Involving work. Or more specifically, my job.

As I write this I am sitting in the Denver airport waiting for my flight to Des Moines, Iowa. I missed my connection flight on Southwest due to "weather". (Now finishing this post a few months later... ;)

My main gig the past 3+ years has been at Cove Smart. They sell a DIY install home security system with professional monitoring and I was able to increase their sales the last 2 years by almost double while cutting their cost to acquire a customer in half. But that is a different story.

On June 4th my dear wife opened the Sam's Club app and noticed they had updated their logo and said "have you thought about working at Sam's Club?" I thought to myself, "that would be quite the career downgrade", before she explained that she meant that had I thought about looking for another job.

I hadn't. But as an exercise I had built an AI powered resume website just to experiment with using AI in a live format where a person could query AI about my experience and receive a factual and detailed answer back. It worked pretty well.

The next morning I went into work like normal and as I opened my computer on my desk I remembered what my wife had said about looking for a job and fired up Indeed. I searched for "CMO or Vice President of Marketing" and the search results came back with a plumbing company at the top.

I liked that they were family owned and seemed to have values that aligned with my own. The job title also matched exactly what I wanted. I had a goal this year to become AI native and hadn't been enabled to use the knowledge and work with AI that I'd put in during my personal time, in my work at Cove.

So I applied. Using an old resume I had uploaded to Indeed a few years ago. Along with a very quickly written cover letter that said to not pay attention to the resume from Indeed and to instead use the AI based resume for reference.

I didn't expect to hear back, to be honest.

I was surprised when later that afternoon I got an email inviting me to schedule an interview with them. I scheduled one of the first days available which turned out to be on the 17th.

It was an HR screening interview but it went well.

A few days later my boss sent me this message.

I knew it wasn't good. Mark never called me into his office like this before at the end of a day. Turned out my gut feeling was correct. They were laying me off. If that is what you call giving a senior member of the team until the end of the month to get their life right. Oh, and no reason to come into the office "if you don't want to".

Deep down I knew that I was no longer enjoying my work at Cove. I'm sure my performance was diminished. But it still hurts to lose a job. Especially when a co-worker left just 2 weeks before and the company paid for a team lunch for everyone to celebrate. My exit was quiet, with zero celebration or even a simple goodbye.

I happened to have been in the middle of a planned 10 day fast. Day 8 actually. I needed to clear my head so I rode the 30 miles home on my bicycle. And then broke my fast early. (because who the F cares at this point, right?) It's interesting how quickly emotions can change our behavior. I simply didn't care about the fast any longer. I rode my bike back into work the next morning, cleared out my office and loaded my bike into the car and drove home.

I worked from home to finish out the month. On the 24th I had a second interview with the plumbing and HVAC company's owner. I thought it went well.

I submitted a few other resumes as well, but nothing came of them. I followed up with a friend's referral to a job that seemed to be a great fit. The company didn't feel the same way. They actually sent me several denial emails, spaced a few days apart. You know, just in case I didn't get the message.

In the meantime I worked on my (previously side) agency projects and tried to figure out how on earth I would fill the very large upcoming income gap.

On the 29th I had an interview with a contractor who works with the plumbing company on AI integrations. It was a bit awkward. I thought it just went okay and it may have blown my chances. The company said that with the 4th of July coming up they would evaluate candidates and make a decision after the holiday.

On the 10th of July I got my last paycheck from Cove. And a call late that morning from Iowa letting me know that I had been selected as the candidate they wanted to hire! It was beautiful timing. Amazing even. A miracle!

Since we already planned to take a long vacation for late July we determined that it would be best if I started after I got back in August.

Which is why I was trying to get to Des Moines for my first day. Spoiler alert: Southwest Airlines sucks now that they have been purchased by private equity.

The crazy thing was that I was one of a tiny subset of men, probably much smaller if you consider that I'm 50 years old, that got a job in the labor market that month.

What were the actual chances that I get that job? One in a million? Billion? I'm sure someone could calculate it but I don't consider it a coincidence. I feel that God wanted me in this position at this time. At this time it's part of my purpose.

I think He also knew that not having a job right now might completely break me. At this time, in this job marketplace, it didn't seem like my chances were very good. And I just don't know if I had the heart, the will, to keep going on if no one wanted my work output anymore.

So each day I try to be really grateful for my job. Even when it's hard adjusting to a new industry, company culture and colleagues. I'm thankful I have honest work to spend time on. To help build a good company that tries to provide good and honest service to their customers.

I'm reading "The Way of Excellence" by Brad Stulberg right now and I highly recommend it. One of the concepts he teaches is one of identification and identity. In a nutshell: you start saying to yourself I am an artist or I am an athlete or I am a doctor or I am a parent and it goes from being something you do to being a part of who you are.

He then writes "This is to be expected. It is a sign of full engagement and intensifying care, a wonderful feeling. But it isn't without risk. That's because when an activity becomes the entirety of who you are and something goes wrong, it upends your sense of self."

I believe this is why in Western culture we often ask, "what do you do for a living?" And it becomes the entirety of the box that we put that person in. It can become the only signal we use to describe their use to us and the world.

Stulberg goes on to explain how he has come to think of identity like a house with example rooms such as artist, bookworm, neighbor, parent, chef, physician, teacher, writer, and so on. In this way, if one of those rooms floods, you can seek refuge in the other rooms while you repair the damage in the one.

The rooms don't need to be the same size, and you don't need to spend the same amount of time in each. The goal is not to be, "balanced." You'll spend different amounts of time and effort in certain rooms during different periods of your life. If you have only one room that gets all of your time, effort and attention, it makes you fragile.

"It's good to be all in, you just don't want to be all in all the time. The scientific term for this is self-complexity."

As I think back on my life in this way, I wish I had a larger house with a few more rooms. I wish that my family room was larger. I think I will move the spirituality/God room from the small room it's in to an entire upper floor!

I'm also realizing that as we go through different chapters of our lives, there will be different rooms that need to be larger and have more time spent in them in that phase of our life. It doesn't mean that always has to be the case. Our priorities can and will need to change. There will also be some rooms that need to be torn down or removed at times to make room for better things.

Work is important. Work is good. Just don't let what you do define who you are. You are the child of a loving God. He has an amazing plan and purpose for your life. I wish you all the best in the journey to finding that purpose through all the phases of your life.