That time I got fired from my dream job
apparently, I'm in good company
Congrats, You Played Yourself is a newsletter celebrating our failures, f*ckups, and faults — and everything in between — and what we’ve learned from them.
We’ll laugh. We’ll learn. We’ll make fun of each other (just a little bit). Maybe we’ll cry. But most importantly: we’ll celebrate all the glorious ways we’ve made fools of ourselves, because that’s what makes us who we are.
And now, time for a story I’ve held close. It’s time to share.
*So much to learn, Young 2015 Juju. Like why you don’t need three different hairbands on your wrists, among other things.
Ah, to be young and broke and unemployed in the greatest, 4th-most expensive city in the world.
It is, simultaneously, just as stressful and fun as it sounds. The fact of the matter is, there was only one reason I found myself in this predicament.
I was fired. From my dream job. Right before Christmas.
Alas — I have jumped ahead. Indulge me for a moment, and let me take you back to a simpler time: the summer of 2015.
Obama is still president, oncoming woes and terrors of a Trump presidency not only far away, but highly unlikely and still, utterly, laughable. A 2020 presidential bid for Kanye is intriguing and almost buyable. You can’t stop belting out “HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIIIIIIIIIDE” in (what is hopefully) an identifiable Adele impersonation at random and mostly inopportune moments. The USWNT is resolutely destroying any team who even thinks to set foot on the same turf as them in the 2015 World Cup and the US Supreme Court rules that gay marriage be recognized at the federal and state level. One Direction breaks up but those UK-boy-band-babes are tweeting their love at each other so, all is good.
And I? Freshly graduated with my Master's in Sports Broadcasting, 2015 saw me as a triumphant valedictorian, having just finished a year-long internship with NBC Sports. Besides moving to New York City as soon as possible, I was in the throes of figuring out how I would pay for aforementioned-New-York-City dream when I received a message on LinkedIn:
Hi Julia! Are you going to be working at NBC after graduation? We are hiring a managing editor for our new company, which will be a site dedicated to women's sports. Would you have any interest in talking to us?
WOULD I.
Women's sports.
New York City.
Editor (!!!).
Had they been reading my thoughts? Stalking my email? Instagram was around, but they weren't reading minds (yet). In some willful act of God, I used only two exclamation marks in my response back.
Just a few weeks later, I was hired and started work as Managing Editor for a women's sports start-up in the greatest city in the world: New York City. It was June in the city, the first professional women's hockey league was in their inaugural draft, and I was falling in love. Life was fucking sweet.
Seven months later, I was fired.
How we got here
It was the all-powerful and always poignant Joan Didion who said, “It’s easier to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends” — or something like that — ironically enough, in an essay about New York.
Why was this job my dream? They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll share this Instagram post in attempt to spare you my waxing poetic about women’s sports.
The job offer was like something I could have only dreamed about: the ability to write, host my own show, run the social and be an advocate for women’s sports, all at the same time? Be part of building an impactful and meaningful brand, with the goal of bringing equal press opportunities and awareness to the athletic prowess of our female athletes that was so overwhelmingly deserved and glaringly absent? In New York City???
So, yeah, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.
Within a just few months, I had launched all the social channels and our blog (of which, I was the sole writer), and began building a brand voice. When the National Women’s Hockey League launched that fall with it’s inaugural season, I paid my own way up the Metro North to Connecticut to be one of the few media-credentialed journalists for the first-ever game. I pitched myself for conferences, brainstormed new social shows and piloted innovative ideas for how to use our digital platforms.
When Abby Wambach announced her impending retirement at the end of the 2015 National Women’s Soccer League season, I bought a ticket to New Orleans within hours and booked my spot in the Mercedez Benz Dome to see her play in her last-ever professional soccer game in late November.
And yet, by the time I was pulled into a late afternoon meeting in early December to be “let go,” I had already, earlier that day, called my mom at lunch, frustrated and exhausted, with a desperation to quit.
It would be obtuse to ignore where I failed, to squarely place all the blame with the start-up. The fire that had been ignited in June had all but burnt out by December, my energy running on fumes and Dr. Pepper, at my best. With a work ethic driven by exciting new ideas and fresh perspectives, I lost my gusto when it came to operationally streamlining and focusing only on what was performing, not what was engaging. I had not yet understood how to manage work/life balance (tbh, still haven’t), and had gone, quite literally, from 100 to 0 in a matter of weeks.
Do I think I deserved the ax for a few weeks of subpar work? Not necessarily. But I do understand that at a start-up, you need employees who are 100%, every day, all the time. I know that not only was I was not giving that anymore, but it wasn’t what I wanted to give either.
And that was the biggest red flag for me: that I wasn’t doing my best, and most importantly, I didn’t want to.
Thank you, next
And so, as my freshly-fired ass strolled through Union Square, their Holiday Market in full force with booths winding around the park, twinkly lights and garland adorning every little shop, I called my mom with the news and a hot coco in hand. The brisk, early December air numbed what eventually would feel like freedom, but at the moment, felt closer to stinging disappointment and shame.
I was living in the fourth-most expensive city in the world and had just been fired from a job that was basically written by my inner-most desires. To put salt on the wound, I had twice turned down job offers in the weeks and months prior, my reasoning being that I "was helping to build something bigger than myself.”
I wasn't leaving New York — there was no question about that. So after taking a long Christmas break, I welcomed January 2016 with a question: what's next?
*Read: “I’m sick in bed” as “my ass got canned”
As an undergrad student, I would set up focus groups with fellow students for Nike in exchange for the occasional gift card. Eager even then for the secret to being successful, I asked one of the women who worked for Cole Haan, then-owned by Nike, for her words of wisdom: "The squeaky wheel gets the oil," she told me.
So: I got squeaky.
I made applying to jobs a part-time job, often sending my resume and cover letter off into the dark nothing of a website. I requested to connect with anyone who I found even remotely interesting on LinkedIn and always included a personal message. I once discovered an editor's email within a resume found in a Google Image search of said editor.
When I wasn't at the computer finding new ways to bother people who didn't know me (yet), I was dog-walking for Wag!, bartending at a tavern in South Street Seaport (Dorlans, if you hear me, send burger and fries asap), and commuting two hours — each way — on the Metro North train to Connecticut for high school basketball color commentary for CPTV, Connecticut's Public Television channel.
I originally felt deep shame about getting fired — or, if we’re using the words that were technically used in my exit interview, “let go.” Imposter syndrome had me feeling allll fucked up for a bit. Was I good at anything? If I couldn’t make a job work that I felt, even if only for a little, was my calling, what was wrong from me?
It’s only been in recent years that I’ve begun owning this fact about myself after realizing that I'm in fantastic company: Mindy Kahling, JK Rowling, Joan Rivers, Anna Wintour (!!!). Wintour herself was once told that she "would never understand the American market.” Yikes-a-roni.
It’s been five years since that fateful December night, and with hindsight being the 20/20 clearsighted sage she is, I’ve learned the journey since then is less about where I’ve ended up now and more about how I handled what could have defeated me.
Getting fired is a proud milestone, not a stain, on my career path. It’s a physical reminder to me not only of a time I failed spectacularly but of how quickly I found another way, of how to “get squeaky.”
It redefined what I thought was “my dream job” when I found myself happier and healthier when I was pouring drinks, walking dogs, and talking free throw percentage of high school hoops teams on TV.
Kerry Washington once talked about her characters getting recast — twice — before she hit her big break.
"When you look back, don’t you feel like there is a logic to how things have fallen into place? If I had gotten picked up on one of those shows, I wouldn’t have been able to do Ray. You know what I mean? It seems at the time like a ‘my-career-is-over’ moment, but it makes perfect sense in the end."
Two months after getting fired, I got a call from my former manager at NBC Sports. "Want to go to Rio in August for the 2016 Olympics?"
Yeah, I was fired from my “dream” job — but it made room for but a real dream to get started.