Re-Learning My Identity – Step One

(Author’s Note – This is part of a series focused on job loss and is the first of three posts focused on identity. I wrote this post in December 2024.)

This past summer I suddenly and unexpectedly lost my job. I had been contemplating leaving this job for a while, but being asked to leave still came as a horrible shock. It was scary. Losing my salary and health benefits was scary. Losing my work social network was scary. But, by far and away the scariest part was the threat to how I saw myself — my identity.

Since that day, I have focused on how I define myself. I am trying to define myself in a way that is not dependent on my job and that is robust to changes in my job. While I have just started on this journey, I wanted to share some early learnings and experiences.

 

My plaque for reaching 10 years of employment at my last job. I lost that job a couple of months after receiving the plaque. 

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Backstory

For over 10 years I had worked at the same company. I had recently received a plaque from the company celebrating those 10 years, along with a nice gift, and the promise of an eight-week paid sabbatical. Over those 10 years, I had built myself into the performance person there. I knew more about testing the performance of our software than anyone else in the company. I was involved in designing and building all of our performance-testing infrastructure. Additionally, I was known in the performance engineering community as the performance guy at that company. I had published blog posts and papers about how we tested performance, and given many talks on the same subject.

Suddenly I wasn’t that person. I didn’t work there, so clearly I wasn’t the performance guy at that company. If I wasn’t that person, who was I? I was still the same husband, parent, friend, who loved to hike, cook, and read, but my professional identity was a large part of my total identity. It was gone and I felt incomplete and adrift without it.

I vowed to never let this happen again. I will no longer define myself (even just my professional self) in terms of my job. That starts by talking about my work, rather than about my job, as my work may be a job, but it may also be volunteering or a hobby. My work will be an expression of my identity, but will not be my identity itself. To meet that vow, I needed to develop a new self-definition. That is easier said than done. I’ve spent the last several months working on this challenge, and I expect to continue working on it for the rest of my life.

Learnings So Far

While I don’t have complete answers yet, I have learned a few things. I started this effort by seeing what I could learn from others: by talking to people and by reading. There’s a lot of literature around identity formation. While most of that literature focuses on adolescents, some, such as Designing Your Life, focuses on adults. The literature has recurring themes around identifying both your values and what you find rewarding. Experimentation can help confirm those learnings and test out potential identities.

I am doing that work. Thankfully, I have been doing some of that work for years, leading a very reflective life. I’m continuing to do that while keeping these new ideas in my head.

Pillars of My New Identity

I’ve started by focusing on the parts of my identity disrupted by losing my job. I intend to extend this work to have a complete sense of my identity. So far, I know that at my best:

1. I make things that other people use.
2. I make the people around me better.
3. I’m a learner who pulls together disparate ideas to create cool things.
4. I write in service of the first three goals.

Through it all, I want the world to be a better place for me having been here. The specifics of how I make the world better will change over time, but I always want to be a positive force.

At my previous job, I built tools that others used to make our product faster, and our many customers used that product to do incredible things. At my next job I will help improve software that helps small and midsized businesses focus on their key business, rather than human resources processes. I have mentored people in the past and will continue to do so, both formally and informally. I listen and give them advice to help them live their best lives. Writing lets me help more people than I could by just talking to individuals. And my learning mindset helps me do a better job at all of this.

Into The Future

I’m starting a new job in a few days. I will dive in and make the best contribution that I can. I will make sure that I express those four pillars of my identity, ultimately making the world a better place. I will also continue to explore who I want to be and work to become that person. At some point, my new job may stop being the best place for me to express and grow that identity. When that happens, I will celebrate my personal progress and shared work experiences, I will find my next, next thing, and jump forward with both feet.

Along the way, I will write about my learnings and experiences so that we can continue to grow together. I encourage you to reflect on how you define your identity and to update it, especially if you define yourself in terms of your job. Additionally, if you have experiences or perspectives that would help me on my journey, I would love to hear from you. I always love learning, and learning from others is usually the fastest path forward for me.

Thank you to Heather Beasley Doyle for her feedback on this post and her support through this entire period of my life. Heather is a gifted writer. You should check out her homepage and her writing.