Hitting the road

The day I was exiled

On January 10, 2006 (Boy, that’s a long time ago), like Felix Unger, I was unceremoniously shown the door. His wife kicked him out; my employer offed me. He never stopped loving his wife, though, and she took him back. I had come to hate my job, and my corporate overlords, so there the analogy ends.

Also, I did not get a frying pan. Some severance (not as much as I deserved, I thought at the time, for helping build a multi-million dollar business line.) But what I did get, as I now understand with the perspective of 16 years, was a path to the future.

Being fired/downsized/made redundant/laid off/right-sized is a horrifically dislocating experience…the first time. It is like quitting tobacco: there are so many emotional associations to the workplace, especially if you’ve toiled there awhile, that separation produces a physical as well as psychological response. It takes time to regain your balance. Some never do.

I had been in the process of starting up an office for my firm in Albany. It was going slowly, but I wasn’t given a timetable. I was making connections and getting a sense of the market. It was not at the forefront of my thinking that this fledgling initiative would, in a few years, be the path that led us out of the corporate world and into a new life. This egg, took a while to hatch.

“We're waiting for the
chirp, chirp, chirp
Of an eaglet being born…”

Being shown the corporate door put me on the road to here and now: out of NYC and into “upstate” (a definition still being argued); away from corporatocracy and conglomeration into the world of small business and non-profits; out of the marketing business and into … well, that’s where the story will continue.