Scratching #1: How I Lost My Job, but Found Myself

For the inaugural launch of what I hope will become an ongoing conversation ("scratchings," as I call them), we’ll begin with the timely topic of what to do when you lose your job—a topic that will also serve as an introduction to your humble host and explain how this Web site came to be.

For many of us, the topic of job loss isn’t really that timely. If you work long enough, more than likely it will happen. I experienced my first layoff more than six years ago, from a company for which I had faithfully labored for ten years. Like any long-term relationship break-up, it was gut wrenching at the time, but ultimately, the best thing that ever happened. Also, like looking back on a romantic break-up, my only regret was that I had not initiated the parting much sooner. Not that I hadn’t tried at least three times, but at each moment some smooth-talking manager convinced me not to leave the relationship, offering some minor incentive and appealing to my sense of loyalty and fear of facing an unknown future. Then, when the company decided that I and many of my coworkers had outlived our usefulness, it dropped us like a hot rock with a typical corporate kiss-off: “’Been nice knowing ya! Here’s your severance check, and by the way, your security card no longer works. See ya!”

Yeah, getting dumped sucks, whether by a man or by a company.

If you’ve experienced this type of career divorce, you have my sympathies, as well as the hope that it will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. For me, it led out of cubicle hell back into remembering the person I once was, and tapping into unrealized internal resources to recreate someone totally new.

First, a little background:

From the time I was a young girl, I knew I wanted to be two things—a mom and a writer. I have fulfilled both dreams, though not without doubts that either might ever come to pass.

I was about nine years old when I first articulated the desire to become a professional scribe. It was during one of those class assignments in which you are asked to discuss your future career. I put down “journalist.” Deep in my heart, however, I doubted this dream would become reality. I was from a family of modest means, growing up in a small southern town where girls were considered successful if they finished high school without a baby in tow.

Around the time I filled out “journalist” on that class assignment, my mother gave me a used typewriter, one of the best second-hand gifts ever received. Over the years I spent hours typing away, writing various unfinished novels, plays, and even a hokey screenplay that went through numerous versions. Looking back, my family must have thought it a strange way for a girl to pass the time, but at least I wasn’t getting into trouble. Along the way I read numerous books about the writing process, always striving to learn more about the craft.

Despite this love for the writing process, life provided detours towards the dream. First, our family business went bankrupt, lessening that possibility that we could afford college. I had always been a good student with a strong work ethic, both of which became absolute necessities in order to earn a scholarship. Somewhere along the way I became convinced that if I made it to college, I needed to try to go to law school. This was the path to great success for most of the female role-models I had observed at home. Still, writing remained a part of me, honed as editor of the school paper and covering the school beat for the local newspaper.

Lo and behold, the overachieving paid off with a scholarship to an Ivy League university. Inwardly I was thinking: “There must be some mistake!” (I thought this right up until the moment four years later when some school official handed me my diploma. After making many donations to the alumni fund, I have finally accepted that the sheepskin is not going to be rescinded). I continued to follow the expected path for a would-be lawyer, majoring in government and taking the LSATs. But then a funny thing happened—the summer between my junior and senior year, I worked for a female lawyer back home, the kind of woman whose success had inspired me to choose a legal career. But working for her opened my eyes to a hard truth: being a lawyer is really boring!

What was more interesting to me was still reading and writing. I was developing questions about history, racism, ethics, etc. that still were not answered by the time I reached senior year. So instead of going to law school, I went to graduate school back down south, still not sure how to answer the question of “What are you gonna do with that degree?” What I did was accept a job with a textbook publishing company. The title was “developmental editor,” but in reality that meant “ghostwriter.” Eventually I moved up to various middle management editorial jobs, all of which I hated, dreaming of a day when I would quit and become a freelance writer.

Yet I kept stopping short, right up until the moment, six months after being promoted to senior editor, when the layoff occurred. Lesson learned: there’s no point in being loyal to any company. Workers are just consumable widgets, to be used until they are no longer useful, then discarded. I was luckier than many, like those over age 50 who had actually hoped to retire with a company pension. Second lesson learned: don’t count on pensions (or now, 401Ks) to take care of you during old age. Plan on working until you die and/or save a bundle. Of course, the thought of working until you die really stinks if you hate the job. Being laid off forced me to finally take the step into freelancing, specializing in educational materials for children. The workflow had its ups and downs, but kept up much better than expected until last year, when the economic downturn began to affect school budgets and my business.

Probably in this situation one might panic or start applying for coffee-making jobs at Starbucks, but with wee ones at home who still needed me and a spouse with a stable enough job that I knew we wouldn’t be thrown into the streets, I tried a different approach. I decided to use the downturn as an opportunity to try something new—writing a full-blown novel.

All of my professional work had been in the area of nonfiction. Mentally, however, I had had several ideas for fictional works that never got beyond the sketch stage due to lack of time or interest. Now, I determined I would literally force myself to finish one complete novel, just as an experiment. So I took one of my sketchy ideas and just started writing. Whenever a paying job came along, I would set aside the novel to make some money, but I always forced myself to come back to it.

Since all of the works published under my legal name have been for schoolkids, I needed a pen name to distinguish this decidedly adult novel from those works. Thus "Victoria Bradley" was born. It is amazing how liberating creating an alter ego can be. Choosing a pen name freed me to write what needed to be written. My real self would be too self-conscious to write dialogue that contained cursing or intimate sex scenes, but “Victoria” has no such inhibitions. She can put onto paper what my real self can only imagine, thus unlocking recesses of creativity I never realized I had.

Traditionally, getting a novel published requires having an agent to pitch it to publishing houses for you. Since educational publishing generally doesn’t require an agent, I have never used one. I also know enough about the business to understand that most trade books get rejected by dozens of agents before finding one, then there is no guarantee the agent will sell it to a publisher. Even then, it will be months more before the book is published (if the project is not cancelled) and even then the author has to do most of his or her own marketing work. In this nervous economic climate, publishers are more reluctant than ever to take a chance on a new author. Entering a new genre would be like starting from scratch.

Knowing myself, I figured I would probably get discouraged by agent rejection and just toss the novel in a drawer. So, I decided to forego the traditional route and publish through a respected print-on-demand company, marketing the book largely through the Internet. The manuscript is currently in the hands of the proofreader and will be in the printing process very soon. Yeah!!

Since I knew little about trade book marketing, I began to study all I could about it. Then, in planning for an author Web site, the idea for Hen House emerged. My novel falls within the genre of women's fiction, targeted mainly at female readers who like to read and are beyond the single, first job life of "chicks." I prefer to call us "gals," but the Hen House seemed an appropriate gathering place for such potential readers. So, rather than just create a site talking about myself and hawking my book, I hope to seek an online community of women who might be interested in starting a conversation about topics of mutual interest. Maybe in the process, you'll buy my book or tell friends your friends about it. Or, we might just have a pleasant conversation about common interests. Think of it as a gals' coffee, except we get to be in separate rooms, towns, cities, etc., hoisting our beverages of choice.

Will Hen House be successful? Depends on your definition of "success." If I make one new acquaintance with whom I have a pleasant conversation, then it will be a success. Will it help sell the novel and attract an agent who'll pitch a second novel to a major publisher? Hopefully, but who knows? What I do know is that in the past year, I have completed a novel, which will be published, treated myself to a Macy’s makeover for a photo shoot, taught myself about book marketing and Web design, and launched this site. I am even beginning the process of enlisting some local college students to create an audiobook version of the novel, which we might offer as a free podcast on this site at a later date, and to make some "trailer"-type videos for posting on You Tube. I don’t expect any of these efforts to make me rich or famous, but I know I’m having a lot of fun along the journey. The ride so far has been a blast!

And that is the point. Over the past year of putting in late nights, blood, sweat, and tears into something that may never reap any financial returns (much like my other job of motherhood), I have rediscovered myself; the self who dreamed bigger than my hometown limits, who decided to forego law school for grad school, who moved to Austin, Texas, with no guaranteed job just because it felt right. Even as I face new wrinkles and sags that come with impending middle-age, I can still look in the mirror and see that same young woman, the adventurer eager to try new things. Somewhere along the way, in the busyness of life and the desire for a steady paycheck, I had lost her. But now I know she’s still there.

So what about you, fellow hens? Think back to when you were young. What did you want to do, to become? Is your true self still present, or has she been buried by the drudgery of daily life? She’s still there, you just have to find her. If you are among the many who have experienced unwanted job changes recently, use the break-up as an opportunity to rediscover yourself. That may entail a major overhaul like starting a new business or career, or it might mean using the time to take some classes and learn something you’ve always wanted to know. Whatever you do, don’t remain idle. Challenge yourself. Get going and get something done. Remember, it’s never too late to reinvent yourself.

Yours in sisterhood, VB