Oh hai, pink slip!

It's been two days since I lost my job. It was something I thought might happen at some point, but not this soon. 

For the past year and a half, I've been working as a writer/editor for an entertainment company. Most of my writing was about movies. I wrote a lot of movie reviews (probably more than 100) and wrote about the Oscars, Kate Winslet, etc. I also wrote marketing copy for my company's four websites. It was a job in line with my interests and talents, and while not everyday was fun, I was more or less content in the job. If nothing else, it gave me the money to lease an apartment on my own for the first time while keeping up with my car payment, keeping my cats fed, and all that. The problem was, I wasn't saving anything. I was in over my head with the apartment. (I took the lease over from an old roommate in December 2008, which doubled my rent. None of my other bills disappeared.) This worried me because I knew sooner or later an unexpected expense would pop up and I'd have difficulty paying for it. I didn't think that unexpected expense would be unemployment.

My parents and a couple of friends say that I'm lucky, in a sense. I get to work until April 10 and after that, I get a few weeks of severance pay before the unemployment insurance kicks in. But I'm still very, very worried. I got my April rent taken care of and May shouldn't be a problem, but after that, things look bleak if I don't find a job. And I know I'm going to have trouble -- everyone is. But Oregon is an especially hard place to be unemployed, with an unemployment rate of 10.8%. This has always been a rough place to look for work. When I graduated from college in 2002, it took me six months to find something, and when I did, it didn't offer benefits. In 2004, I lost my job after being hospitalized for a week. I found something within a month, but then I was let go again, and I spent the next five months looking for a job and not finding anything. I wound up going back to school for a second Bachelor's degree. (Never finished it.) A few months later, my then-boyfriend heard of an editorial assistant position where he worked. I interviewed and got the job, which later blossomed into the job I just lost. 

I've spent almost three years with the company and my job has gone through a lot of transitions. First, I was an assistant and only worked part-time as  a contractor. When the boyfriend and I moved to L.A., I began freelancing for the company. When I moved back to Portland when the relationship ended, my old co-worker asked me to come back. I started off mainly as an assistant, but then the editor got fired and I took over. At least until I got laid off.

I'm still dealing with the shock of this. I Googled "job loss" and "layoffs" and a few sites suggested that reacting to a job loss is much like reacting to the death of a loved one. Meaning, there's shock, anger, denial, bargaining, etc. It sounds corny, but yes, I feel like I lost a loved one. My emotions are similar to the ones I experienced when my grandma died a couple of years ago. You think something (or someone) will be around forever and you're content with this assumption. Then the job or loved one is gone and you're left trying to figure out what the fuck happened and how you can move on. And that's not even taking practicalities into consideration, like keeping yourself fed and making sure the power stays on. Before when I was unemployed, I was either living at home or with a boyfriend, so I had a safety net. 

This time, I don't. And it scares the hell out of me.