I found out last week that I'm losing my job.
I hope you'll forgive me if I don't feel like writing a long, anecdotal introduction like I usually do for this bit of news. I figure you should get it delivered the exact same way I did: with little decoration and no anticipation. Just there, primed like a fist to reach out and punch you right in the gut.
Basically, the extremely short version of the story goes like this: each July we get a check from the economic development program that funds the Music Foundation, and each year that check has gotten just a teensy bit smaller. But this year, year five of the program, it got a lot smaller. Like, 30 to 40 percent smaller. And so, last Wednesday, I found out that my final day at the Foundation will be July 29.
In the 10 days since then, I've gone through what I think must be a new 17-stage grieving process, feeling everything from angry and indignant to heartbroken to confused to absolutely effing terrified. And then there are the times -- about once a day -- when I decide that the universe must be playing some colossal joke on me because not one month ago when I came back from San Diego I'd started contemplating my next steps.
I'd started thinking about exploring somewhere new or changing directions, but that was still a good ways into the future. I needed to save money, pay down my student loan and my credit card. I needed to make more connections. I needed to learn more. And regardless of the massive curve ball that's hurtling toward home plate right now, I'm still pretty certain I need to do those things. Whatever that next step I had in mind was, I'm not ready to make it just yet.
I can't help but get lost inside the worry sometimes that I'll never find this job again. A job that combines just about everything I've ever loved to do and every talent I ever had. A job that makes me want to work weekends and evenings and a job full of people I respect and like and want to call not just my colleagues but my friends. I know that I'm notorious for relegating things into extreme categories. Seeing things in black and white. I can't imagine that I'll ever find something this fulfilling again, probably mostly because I didn't know it existed before I found it. Now I'm convinced I never will again.
Losing your job is one of those handful of situations in life where no one ever knows what to say to you. And so mostly they just say, "You'll be okay." And I always just smile and say thank you, because I know that at the heart of "you'll be okay" is a compliment, a vote of confidence, an unspoken belief that this person has that I am talented and smart enough to make it through this. But honestly? Of course I'll be okay. I once directed and acted in a three-night production of The Vagina Monologues less than 24 hours off an appendectomy in five-inch heels in the middle of a BLIZZARD. I scraped by in New York on a wage that equaled less than $6,000 a year. I once moved to another country because I felt like it.
Make no mistake about it -- there are plenty of things I don't know and just innumerable lessons I've yet to learn. But while I can't predict the future, I can predict me. And me is one stubborn, determined, tenacious girl who lives for a challenge and doesn't give up easily.
The day that I learned about the cuts, a day I feel like I can remember every single minute of, I remember laughing at myself, wondering how I got to be such an eternal optimist. I mean, don't get me wrong -- this has been a fairly gut-wrenching experience. After our huge showcase Friday night, the culmination of a project we'd all been working on for months and months, I left the venue first, walked to my car alone and cried the whole way home. But when those moments pass, I feel something bubbling inside me that the time is right. That everything happens for a reason. That a seriously fucking delicious pitcher of lemonade is about to be hand-squeezed out of this whole situation.
Because serendipitously enough, when I came back from San Diego and started contemplating those next steps, one of the things I did was reach out to some artists about PR and publicity. It's something I've been interested in for a while and something I thought might be a great foundation for whatever that elusive next step might be.
So y'all? Meet my next step: Signal Flow PR.
What I knew from the moment I learned the news was that there wasn't really time for wallowing. Only time for getting up off your ass and DOING. And do, I did. You can follow Signal Flow on Twitter, fan Signal Flow on Facebook and of course check out the website. And come next Friday you might be able to quadruple my current client roster since I've got more meetings scheduled this week than I think I've ever taken in the space of a month. If I've learned anything from my fascination with hip-hop, it's one word: HUSTLE.
Whatever happens, this job has defined my passions and indelibly altered the course of my career and my life. And maybe it's because I don't think a music community like this one exists anywhere else, or maybe it's also (just a little bit) because this wasn't on my terms, but either way -- I have no doubt that I'm not done with Memphis just yet.
cheers,
elizabeth
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