Unemployment Benefits

by Trudi Sampola

If you’ve ever lost a job, you’ll know what a shit thing it is to go through. If you’ve ever lost a job you loved, you can 10X that feeling.

That’s what happened to me last week when I lost my job as the General Manager of Marketing at Placie.

I work hard and I’m not embarrassed to say I enjoy that. When you have a sense of purpose at work, doing things that are challenging and interesting, what’s not to love?

Now, I realised, I would be looking at approximately fifty free hours in my week ahead. What the hell would I do with myself?

Suddenly there was no budget to manage, no data to analyse, no campaign to launch, no creative to think about or copy to write. Also (the hardest bit), no team to collaborate with.

I had forgotten how much admin goes into leaving a job! Devices, mobile contracts, paperwork…it really adds up. To be specific, it added up to 12 hours in those first days after I left Placie. Still, that left me with about 38 spare hours.

Want to know how I filled in week one Post Placie?

I loved and lost my job at Placie a week ago.

When a huge chunk of your identity suddenly disappears overnight, it feels like a blow to the body, heart and soul. It’s a strange experience to realise you will now have 38 hours in a week that are unscheduled.

Here is my account of what I did in my first week Post Placie (PP).

I wasn’t sure what to think, feel or do after waking up on Day 1 PP. Admittedly, my head and heart were really hurting. Was it due to the 127 gins I had dehydrated myself with? The family size triple cheese and pepperoni pizza I had single-handedly inhaled? Or was it that suddenly a huge part of my identity working on a business I loved had just been deleted. Probably a combination of all three.

My friends and loved ones wisely recommended taking a little time to digest and process everything.

After all, I had been working at carsales for 4.5 years, with the last 2+ years on Placie, a carsales start-up business.

Here’s how my week rolled.

Exorcise (no, that’s not a typo)

2 hours

I thought I had better flush out all the evil spirit I’d been guzzling so I kicked off Monday with a new personal trainer. We did a marathon two-hour session together (I know: the stuff of gym bunnies)! I was smashing those weights and boxing like a boss and geez I felt strong and really awesome!