In November of 2017, after 20 years at a job I enjoyed, Symantec made the decision to outsource much of our workforce to India. Those of us remaining in the U.S. would either work from home or move to Utah. As a result, I was laid off. Initially, I had a few days of panic and then realized that part of the deal included the possibility of getting a degree for ‘retraining’ in a different industry. The thought of being able to collect unemployment while I went back to school, earn a degree, and come out of it without student loans seemed like an exciting opportunity.
I thought to myself, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”
Knowing full well that I was far past “growing up” and already in my late 40’s, I asked myself what I was good at: talking with people, networking, and promoting business. I then asked “What would be something that would never stop being needed?”, and landed on getting a degree in Business Management from Lane Community College.
As I wrote about in Possibility, my first big opportunity was becoming a photographer for the LCC school paper. Then, I got involved with Greg and the fashion shoots, and got published in a few magazines. None of those opportunities would have existed in quite the same way if I hadn’t lost my comfy, cushy job at Symantec.
Somewhere during that reinvention, I adopted the phrase, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” At the time, I think I was mostly trying to convince myself that getting shoved out of my comfort zone was a good thing.
As I move into this next part of my life, I’m trying to pay more attention to opportunities when they appear. I’m trying to get better at noticing opportunities before my brain has enough time to explain why they’re a bad idea. Trying a food I’ve never eaten. Going somewhere I’ve never been. Meeting new people. Taking a different road. Saying yes to an invitation. Dating someone whose life experiences are different from what I’ve known. Even allowing my sons to figure things out without immediately jumping in to solve the problem.
None of those things are necessarily life-changing by themselves. But neither was walking up to a photographer underneath a basketball hoop and asking him what he was doing. I had no idea where that five-minute conversation was going to lead. I was just curious enough to ask.
The funny thing about opportunity is that it doesn’t always look like one when it shows up. Sometimes it looks like getting laid off from a job you’ve had for twenty years. Sometimes it looks like plans falling apart, a relationship changing, someone telling you no, or simply finding yourself somewhere you never intended to be.
Had someone walked into my office at Symantec in October of 2017 and offered me the “opportunity” to lose my job, go back to school in my late 40’s, completely change careers, and figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my working life, I probably would have politely told them to fuck off.
Yet, a month later, that’s exactly where I was.
I didn’t choose the circumstances, but I did get to choose what I did with them. Opportunity isn’t just a good thing that comes along. Sometimes it’s what you do with something you didn’t ask for.
Looking back, losing that job created a ridiculous chain reaction in my life. Going back to school introduced me to people I never would have met. Those people introduced me to other opportunities. Some of those opportunities turned into jobs, friendships, photography, business connections, and experiences that simply wouldn’t exist if I had stayed comfortably sitting behind the same desk.
That doesn’t mean getting laid off was wonderful. It sucked. I’m also not going to pretend that every shitty thing that happens secretly contains some magical gift waiting to be discovered. Sometimes shitty things are just shitty.
But sometimes they change your direction just enough that you end up somewhere you never would have gone on your own.
It also makes me wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed because they didn’t look like opportunities at the time. How many times did I say no because something wasn’t practical? How many times did I stay comfortable because comfortable was working? How many times did I convince myself that I wasn’t ready?
I don’t really have an answer to that, and beating myself up about opportunities I may have missed isn’t particularly useful. What I can change is how I respond to the next one. Maybe I don’t need every opportunity to come with a five-year plan. Maybe I just need to recognize when a door opens and decide whether it’s worth walking through.
I’m still going to say no to things. Some opportunities aren’t right for me, some are going to come at the wrong time, and some are probably going to be terrible ideas disguised as good ones. I’m okay with that.
What I don’t want to do anymore is automatically dismiss something simply because it wasn’t part of the plan.
In 2017, I thought I had lost a twenty-year career. I had. There is no need to rewrite that part of the story.
What I couldn’t see yet was everything that had suddenly become possible because the path I was on had ended.
Sometimes an opportunity is a door that opens. Sometimes it’s realizing the door behind you just closed.
Either way, you still get to decide where you go next.