Life In Recovery; On Being Set Free From My Old Job.

I won’t lie, when I heard the words, “we could talk about the minor points for hours, but at the end of this, your position with Midwest will be terminated”, I panicked. Twenty-five years, I’ve never had to worry about finding a job.

Three hours later, I had an offer from one of our bigger customers. I would be going to work in a supervisory role over the company that had just let me go. That was it, three hours. I hadn’t even had time to process being let go and I’d already landed.

Three weeks later, it’s more like I was set free. The new company is treating me better than the one that I left. It’s not perfect, of course. The new job is more difficult – let’s say it requires more focus, but I’m doing the part of my last career that I loved the most.

How many times have I labeled something “bad”, only to find out later that it’s exactly what I needed? How often have I thought something was “good”, only to come to realize it was really holding me back? I could riff about the different scenarios for hours.

If a life in recovery from addiction has taught me anything, I like to think it’s that I’m a little like that Chinese farmer, though not a farmer and more Irish, Polish and Italian than Chinese. Who am I to say if something is good or bad? It simply is. We call this living life on life’s terms… and it’s not all bad. Or good.

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