I felt ready to take on that final interview, prepared, fully versed on the news of the week, the anchors of the show, and more.
When, halfway through the interview, one of the anchors asked me if I had watched that day, and what I might have done differently had I been producing, I was immediately thrilled because I had watched and I had several suggestions. Then I panicked. I couldn’t remember a single thing. It had not crossed my mind to bring my pages of notes into the meeting.
My mind was suddenly empty.
Nerves frayed from the trauma of studying, finding new things to wear, and making sure I sounded like I knew what I was talking about, I blanked.
Full. On. Blanked.
And suddenly so frantic was I that recovery was 100 percent impossible.
“I did watch,” I said to the room full of people awkwardly waiting to hear, “but I can’t remember anything right now.”
It was all the more tragic because it sounded like every unemployed producer on the planet had applied for that job, and as I understood it, it was down to the final two, me being one. I stumbled through the rest of my interview, mortified and humiliated, and after I left, I didn’t make it out the door of that building before bursting into tears.
I was buckling under the pressure of the search.
But the Universe must have had plans for me. What was it telling me? That was very unclear.
Once it became painfully obvious that a real job wasn’t going to happen fast, and once I learned what severance-plus-unemployment-plus-subsidies-from-my-mom were going to look like and how grim the job market was, I made a budget and instituted my own austerity program.
Molton Brown soap was sadly the first indulgence to go. Ivory bar soap would do just fine. All subscriptions to magazines and newspapers went away too—canceled immediately. Instead, the nail salon downstairs in my building served as a de facto library, and I would go and sit there to find out which stars were, in fact, just like us. I snatched my neighbors’ discarded newspapers, and I curated a list of user logins from friends for major newspapers online and premium TV channels. Pride went out the door.
I initiated a one-pump rule for all remaining soap-like products—shampoo, conditioner, face wash, and moisturizer. No more mindlessly pumping a handful of liquid; I was on a budget. Every once in a while, when I was feeling blue or neglected, I’d hesitantly treat myself to a second pump. I stopped taking cabs. I stopped taking classes.
I sold some stuff, including a pole-dancing pole I had installed in the second bedroom. I had jumped on the popular pole-dancing-class bandwagon (to feel empowered, I was told). Class was super fun and physically challenging, but while most people could climb to the top of the pole in class, I found I could not. I would slide down and not be able to do the flip at the top—or all the good moves that came with hoisting oneself to the ceiling.
I didn’t feel empowered, I felt pissed-off. So, I bought a pole and had it installed in my apartment so I could practice climbing at home. Competitive much? (I never made it to the top. Not once.)
So, along with fancy soap, I said goodbye to the pole and the pricey classes that went with it.
Shopping was no longer an activity for me either, unless it was mission-critical. I canceled my gym membership and the trainer, too. For the first time in my life, I priced out items like toilet paper and paper towels, and almost daily did a cash tally, measuring out just how far I could stretch things if the worst happened and I found no work.
In hindsight, I perhaps unnecessarily catastrophized the situation. And to this day, I’m a catastrophizer, thanks to the worry of not having a regular paycheck.
I braced for the worst.
My severance ran out on March 27, 2009, and that was a more brutal day than the layoff itself. That’s when hope died and panic set in.
When I went on unemployment, as per some official New York State policy, I had to go downtown to a state-run resume seminar. I won’t lie: I was heading in there with serious attitude. I couldn’t believe I had to endure the humiliation of learning to make a resume. Uh, I got this. I don’t need a seminar. I wanted to spend the time looking for jobs. But, to my surprise, my irkedness paled in comparison to the rest of the crowd. My class was filled with Wall Street guys whose body language (arms crossed, no pen in hand, slouched down in their seat) made clear they were more pissed-off than I was to be there. They were wearing super fancy watches, beautifully tailored untucked striped shirts, and expensive sunglasses propped on top of their heads. And they weren’t happy. I realized then that, while my job loss sucked bad, they had further to fall than I did, financially speaking. It’s a long drop from a healthy seven figures to unemployment. I wondered what their austerity budgets looked like. I was giving up expensive hand soap. They were giving up second and third homes. Still, like the entire process, it was emotionally draining and completely demoralizing.
The professional trauma hit me hard. In fact, for many years, it was the driving force behind many of my life decisions. But, instead of assessing the circumstances around me that may have contributed, I looked inward: Here’s what’s wrong with you, and that is why you are here.
It took a decade to realize that landing thirty-one interviews in an employment crisis was an impressive feat. But, at the time, I didn’t know that. It didn’t feel impressive.
It felt desperate.
You Can Eat Your Dinner or Drink Your Dinner, But You Can’t Do Both
career
For one hot second, being a little chubby paid off. In fact, it was the impetus for career number two.
My battle with my weight started in my mid-twenties. Once I was introduced to the adult world of working all day, the culinary thrill that is New York City, and traveling and therefore eating out on a corporate card, a never-ending war with the scale began. I was a skinny enough kid, but as an adult, my weight could best be described as up and down like a toilet seat at a party. It probably always will be, try as I may to manage that struggle.
I had done some radical diets over the years, but pre-layoff, around 2006 or 2007, I decided to see a registered dietician on a weekly basis. As part of her process, I would write down my food in a journal each week and track my calories, a startling and painfully revealing exercise.
Did you know a Starbucks Vente skim latte has about 130 calories?
A quarter of an avocado has 100.
Each week, when I had my appointment, I had to show the nutritionist what I had been taking in. She had a lot of funny lines, including, after seeing my notes listing margaritas (plural) with a platter of Mexican food, “You can either eat your dinner or drink your dinner, but you can’t do both.”
Translation: If losing weight when you are on the south side of five foot two means consuming 1350 calories per day, not per meal, then using 500 or, okay, 750 of them on three drinks is problematic.
After hearing that particular line, I told her she should write a book. She told me she didn’t know how to write a book, so I trotted down to Barnes & Noble and bought a book on how to write a non-fiction book proposal to see if I could drag a book out of her. We teamed up, found an agent (Maura, still my agent today), and actually sold the proposal for Urban Skinny!
I still had my job at BusinessWeek at the time, so collaborating on a book was just what kids today call a side hustle.
Though I wrote that book while I was still employed, it wouldn’t hit the shelves for years, after I’d been laid off.
Broken