the winter of unemployment

last week, i was contemplating my list of things i'm thankful for this year. near the top was my employer, which i wanted to thank for giving me my dream job and allowing me to attend fun parties for work purposes and get lots of lovely free stuff. i ended this ode (in my head) with "okay, now please don't fire me!"

sadly, that was all just wishful thinking on my part. and, it gets worse.

as soon as i started this job in august, the economy tanked. or rather, it had been tanking and it went south just a bit faster around then. you know, with the collapse of lehman and merril lynch blah blah blah. one of my jobs was to report on monthly sales reports from retailers. the news was always doom and gloom, with numbers sinking lower and lower every month.

about a month after i started, the parent company of my magazine announced a hiring freeze. then, around halloween, they closed another men's fashion mag, fired a bunch of internal web people and most of the online staff of their new business magazine and announced that every magazine would have to trim costs by 5%. i panicked. having just been hired, i knew my days were numbered if our mag had to cut staff.

but, i rationalized, i had a lot of support from staff members here. some had been vocal about having my back, speaking well of me to top editors and generally helping me out. i was also the lowest paid staff member, i'm sure, so i hoped they would keep me on because i'm a steal.

then it happened. a thursday afternoon, uneventful and like any other, in the midst of closing our latest issue. we were told the magazine was shutting down completely. some would be kept on to work at the sister pub, and they called us in one by one to learn our fates. i was last. i knew what was coming. in the end, they were very nice to me, telling me to try to pitch freelance articles and send them my resume. will something come of it? i hope so. i don't have any other options right now.

ultimately, 8 people were kept on, and more than a dozen, including our editor in chief, were shown the door. i know i shouldn't take it personally, but it hurts. this job was my shot to enter the big leagues, and i loved it. i was excited to start a career in fashion. i loved the parties (no matter how much i complained about having to go!), the gift bags and the new sense of style that i was just starting to pick up. three months is hardly any time at all to establish yourself or learn. i feel like i was never given the chance to settle in.

its sad that i will no longer have a job, or an office, or a desk, or a place to go every day. and my career is kind of in limbo. but i'm still lucky in lots of ways, and i refuse to get down on myself about this right now. it will come, but just not yet.

this year has been so difficult for me. i have faced a huge break up, a foot injury and the death of my grandmother. and now this. its hard to say that i have hope when i've been beaten down so much in the past six months. i know it could have been worse. i won't list the things i could have experienced that would top this. i'm hopeful that it won't get any worse, and things will just start to slowly go up from here. if anyone deserves a big comeback its me, right?

the saddest part of all this is that this job came at a very dark part of my life, and it indicated the beginning of a new chapter, along with a new love interest, a new apartment and a new roommate. but not long after all those good things happened, the wind started to change. here's hoping that the indignity of unemployment will stem the negative tide, and it will only be up from here.