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Day 2: Write Through What You Go Through

I've never been very good at journaling.

I'm not consistent enough. In my early years, I hated writing. Don't ask me why, but the difference between there/their/they're and were/we're (and others) took me longer to grasp than I'd like to admit. If you asked me to breakdown a sentence or identify parts of speech, I still couldn't do it. But a while ago (ok, a long time ago now...), when I was in grad school, I took a class about writing to learn. Having just come out of the hard sciences in my undergraduate degree, I thought this class was nonsense. The professor was some hippie writer and educator who wanted to understand his students, to use writing as a method to help students learn the material, and to figure out where students were struggling with the material. I read along. I wrote my journal entries. I attended the class and participated. But it remained nonsense to me.

It remained nonsense to me until the day my professor used my journal entry as an example to the class (he read 1-3 entries out loud each class) of what he was trying to accomplish with these exercises, and as future educators, what we should be hoping for from our students. Apparently, within my 3 pages of journal, I managed to change my own mind about what he was teaching us. I don't remember the prompt or the reading, but I remember my professor standing in front of class and being like "did everyone hear the point in the journal when she changed her mind and started understanding the material?" And I remember thinking "oh shoot [censored], I did change my mind!"

I still don't love writing, but I now concede it helpful in certain situations.

And here I am in one of those situations. 2 days ago, I was let go as part of layoffs at my company. And here I am, with absolutely no idea what I'm going to do next. I recognize this vulnerability is a liability, and my journaling may put off some employers if I share this blog to my LinkedIn, but I am starting this blog to work through some of my ideas and toss around what I might want to do next.

For roughly 5 years now, I've been working in project management. I started as a business analyst, putting together requirements and creating cost/benefit analyses, and then got hired and trained as a Scrum Master at a new company. The jump wasn't hard - my new organization used the same software, and I was already trained in Lean Six Sigma and SAFe. As it turns out, I'm good at being a Scrum Master. I used a bunch of my past positions to propel me forward and connect with my teams. I asked a lot of questions, and met with a lot of people in order to learn about the company, industry, and my own role. After 18 months, I felt comfortable and was receiving good performance reviews. I even had the chance to mentor new Scrum Masters during my time - my company was changing over to all SAFe, so some people were becoming Scrum Masters, and I was more than happy to help out. I had told my manager that I was happy enough where I was for now, but I knew I wasn't going to retire as a Scrum Master. She understood, and since SAFe was taking over our org, I thought new positions might open up.

Then 2 days ago, I got invited to a secret meeting with a cryptic body and subject. I was suspicious. I didn't think my department would be impacted by the rumored layoffs since I was SAFe trained and on a SAFe team, and that's the direction we were headed. Surely, I would be fine! As you've figured out, I (ironically) was not safe. Apparently 18 months wasn't long enough to be saved by the broad brush of layoffs that were targeting tenure.

... so now what? I luckily got some severance, but the reality is that since I'm in the US, I don't have health insurance without a job. But that said, I was already looking to move up, so is it time to do that now? Should I stay in my current industry? Should I go back to another familiar industry? Do I want to stay within project management? Do I want to find my way back to education? Or science? Do I want to stay in the private sector? Or do I want to head back to the public sector?

I'm going to be honest. I have no idea. And this is how I know this blog is a liability - I'm not saying "my absolute passion is [this field]" or "I can't wait to get another position as a [insert role here]." I'm not against anything I've done! And I have a lot of other interests I could pursue... and I think that's why I don't know what's next. I'm feeling indecisive. The world is my oyster, but I'm not yet ready to get wet to find that oyster.

So here I am. And here I write.

Maybe I'll change my mind or learn something as I go.

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