I found out at the beginning of October that I was being laid off from World Resources Institute. For reasons far out of my control (but which anyone could see coming) our funding was constricted due to world politics and ongoing institutional challenges that weren’t addressed over years of rapid growth. My position, lofty as it sounds, became redundant, and my tenure made me expensive, so it was pretty clear I was on the chopping block. This seems to be a common issue with Gen X professionals in middle management—we’re too experienced and expensive to keep but haven’t ascended to the C-level to become bulletproof. They don’t offer a severance package, but they’re keeping us RIF’d folks on until December 1, and we keep our healthcare until December 31, so I’ve had some breathing room to get my affairs in order, polish the resume, and start blasting it out as much as possible.

After speedrunning through the first three stages of grief—I spent all of 30 seconds on denial, five minutes on anger, and two minutes on bargaining—I’ve been cycling between depression and acceptance, punctuated with moments of panic. I ran some numbers through Monarch, our handy money management app, and when I saw the first number it returned for our monthly outlay I nearly had a heart attack. I’ve been laid off twice before, and having always been paranoid about money, I keep an Oh-Shit fund at all times. Monarch’s estimate was much higher than I had bargained for, but when I started reviewing it I was able to chip away at a bunch of unnecessary line items to get to a number that was much easier to accept.

The big issue is going to be health insurance. COBRA, which has never been affordable or equitable, is the first option, and the number I got from our HR reps at work was more than our combined mortgage, car payment, and phone bill. The ACA Marketplace was my next stop, and while I didn’t dig too deep, the pricing there was more affordable per month—but with an astronomical deductible. So we’ve got to make some hard choices there. Next week I’m going to dive into that particular nest of snakes and do some comparison shopping.

I’ve signed up for several job search websites, some paid and some free, and have been using Claude to help me tailor cover letters to each position I’ve applied to. I’ve found it’s easy to ask AI to get the letter started, and then do a massive rewrite in my own voice to remove the robot from the text. As I expected, I haven’t heard much back yet, but I’ve got some friends at work who are putting the word out for me, with some success so far.

Another, more interesting lifeline could be teaming up with Brian to renew our work on Slowflake the EV project, with a goal of getting it running so that we can show it locally and drum up a project where someone else will pay us to convert their vehicle. There’s a lot to work out with this plan: I’d have to stay in Chestertown through the week and come home on weekends; I’d most likely be taking home renovation work on with Brian to cover our mortgage and bills; and I’d be away from the girls for a long period of time. But this one, I feel, has the most potential for growth. I’ve been thinking for a long while about my future as a creative with the ascendancy of AI, and it seems like a safer bet to stay employed is to make something with your hands that can’t be replicated with four prompts in a browser window. And if we owned a business we’d be in control of our own destiny instead of depending on others to make sure the train stays on the track. I’m still young, I’m healthy, and I can work with my hands—it’s something I look forward to. Maybe this is the time to take the chance and see where it goes.

The first step is to travel over to Brian’s, review our progress, and come up with a plan. If I’m out on the bricks in December, and we can plot out a solution to get Slowflake running—and make it happen, God willing—then we’d have a completed project to show and drum up some business. If we could get a paying project in the door for conversion, that would go a long way to making this a reality.