#reverb10 - December 5

Let go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

Let's play The Obvious Game. I went through a bad layoff last year. It felt like the worst breakup I'd ever had. I had been with this newspaper for two years, during which I worked 12, 14, 16-hour days, nights and weekends, for practically nothing. I threw myself into my work with abandon. It was my job, and because I loved it with a passion, it was my life.

I was the local girl, the face and spirit of my hometown paper, which I had returned to serve after college. I made friends with the adults I'd known in my childhood and I adored the small children who begged me constantly to take their picture.

At some point it all came off the rails for the newsgroup that employed me. To put it diplomatically, the staff shrank slowly over the course of about 18 months, strategic promotions were made and due to reigning management opinion suddenly 9 of 11 photographers between eight newspapers found themselves out of a job. Many reporters and office staff, too. The photographers were informed that they were valued less, as it is "easier to teach a reporter to take pictures than a photographer to write."

I was laid off on April Fool's Day, 2009. Not funny, IMO. I had been spared from the first several rounds of layoffs and told I had new, important responsibilities. Cue rug yank...now. As a loyal co-worker angrily asked a GM in a meeting shortly thereafter, "We've cut the fat. And the muscle, and the bone. What's left?"

To make matters worse, these dramatic staff cuts were not publicized or explained. Sources kept e-mailing and calling me, and one by one I had to fight back emotion and tactfully explain what had happened. The paper continued running my photographs without crediting me. The wound was ripped open, again and again.

Because of this it was difficult to move past it. There were maybe three jobs nationwide in the journalism industry at the time; I had no choice but to start a business in a rough economy. To add insult to injury, out of our damaged friendship my editor said and did some very unprofessional, and cruel, things to hurt me further. I can still get worked up about it if I think too hard. But looking back the brass did me a favor. And this year I've started to let it go. Drop by drop, the water slowly slides off my back and I start to smile.

Life is better now. When I work a long day, which I still do with joy, I can sleep in and if I'm two minutes late to my desk there's no one to yell at me. I'm very careful not to micromanage my dog. I go on vacation! I set my schedule and answer to no one but myself, and my wonderful clients. For so, so many of them I would lasso the moon or move mountains.

Will those managers, that newsgroup, ever be the same in my mind? Probably not. Some scars don't ever leave us. But I'm starting to forget how much it hurt. I'm burying it, letting go, and my new-and-improved career is the closure I needed.

Last year I was dealt a blow from which I thought I'd never recover. I thought my life, my self had been taken without a second thought. I know that the company line is often the bottom line. I know now that I'm lucky, because that particular line may just have saved me. I was given the opportunity to let go of it.

As the memory fades I keep climbing.