{ 02 08 2010 }

Building an Empire

Three and a half weeks ago, I got laid off. After the partners herded us into our designated conference rooms for the mass lay-offs, I cried in the lobby restroom for an hour.

Then I went home, started drinking, and got to work.

Only a few days earlier, I had been visiting my parents. While we were watching a marathon of The Office, my mother made an off-hand remark that I would be great at writing a tv show (yeah. I know.), or writing greeting cards because I’m so funny.

Yeah, I snorted. “Talk about my dream jobs!”

Mom and I resumed watching Jim and Dwight and I didn’t think about the subject again.

Several days later, the morning I got laid off, I was in the bathroom getting ready to go to work. Anti-depressant, swallow, anti-anxiety medication, swallow, allergy pill, swallow. With each tip of the head back, I heard the familiar tune of the “I Hate My Job” song chiming in my head (which follows the same melody as the “I am so Bored” song because my seething hatred is too pissy to be creative).

With mascara wand in hand, I suddenly had a flash of brilliance that nearly knocked me onto my ass with the force of its awesomeness. Hey, if I get laid off, I could make my own greeting cards and sell them. I’m funny and shit. It could totally work. I pulled out a small memo pad from my pill drawer and wrote down a few ideas for cards: Congrats on not being pregnant; sorry I cheated on you; congrats on the divorce; way to beat alcoholism; I love that we can be bitches together [two of these I have designed already] This could be fun! I could use my snark for money as well as evil. I’m creative, prolific, and I know enough of that fancy Adobe software to do everything myself.

[Soooo… if I told you that I’m not a lawyer but that I’ve actually been in the advertising industry all this time, would you believe me?]

With a smile on my face, I finished putting on my make-up (and it was almost symmetrical) and went to work. I had a plan in my back pocket, just in case.

Well it was a good fucking thing, because that afternoon I got The Email of Doom along with 20% of the rest of the company. Sure, even though I had dreamed the night before that I got laid off and I woke up in an unusually chipper mood, it still sucked ass.

When I got home from work, my phone was full of text messages from friends asking how I was.

I’m scared out of my fucking mind. Not because I lost my job, but because there’s this giant Texas-sized flag waving across my life that says HEY DUMBASS. THIS IS WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY LOOKS LIKE. TAKE IT OR I’LL BITCHSLAP YOUR SORRY ASS BACK TO CUBEVILLE.

I have no excuse not to go for it right now, I told myself. A small severance package, six months of unemployment checks, twelve months of health insurance through COBRA, and enough small jobs for back-up income that I won’t starve. Besides that, both my parents are entrepreneurs several times over and they both have MBAs. I’ll have all the free business advice I can stand.

I may actually pull this off, I realized.

Oh fuck.

Within three hours of being laid off my job, I was tipsy off cube wine and sketching out what would become my business plan. Ten minutes of creative brainstorming led to an entire page full of ideas for snarky greeting cards. I stayed up late working, meanwhile I ignored all my friends’ phone calls. I had a hell of a lot of work to do if I wanted to keep my ass out of Corporate America.

The next morning I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a full hour before I normally woke up for work.

Oh. Is this what it feels like to be excited about what you do? How delightful.

That first full day working on the business that quickly became Vixen’s Empire, I vowed to myself that I would never again work in Corporate America.

On Friday, I opened up my online shop–a mere 23 days after losing my job. Sure, most of those have been twelve-hour plus work days, but I’d much rather work twelve challenging hours a day for myself than eight mindless hours a day for someone else. No more “I hate my job” song for me. It’s nothing but hells yeah and BOOBS from here on out.


Posted by Over Educated Nympho on Monday, February 8th, 2010, at 2:48 am, and filed under work, WTF, my empire.

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