I would immediately start looking for another job, or reinvent myself and start a business of my own.
In 1983, I got laid off from my job as a sous chef. I was 18 and in college. I couldn't find another job. A friend had also got laid off from his job doing "plan-o-grams" for a retail chain. We both had an interest in photography. He had what I needed to go pro. I had what he needed to go pro. So we formed a partnership and did both commercial and portrait photography. We made good money, too, but our partnership fell apart due to my perception that my partner liked cashing checks but didn't really like working all that much.
I played in a music competition at college around that same time. A guy heard me play the guitar and offered me a job in a working band. I took him up on that and worked my way through college as a gigging musician. I made good money doing that, too. In fact, I made more annual income as a musician than I did during my first three years of law enforcement.
I got in to law enforcement because I wanted to do something a little more meaningful in life than playing to drunks in bars, at weddings, business parties, and bar mitzvahs. I could also see that the club scene was moving away from live bands to D.J.'s.
In 1996, I left a career in law enforcement for a job in the private sector. That gig eneded almost as soon as it began because the company went "tango uniform" and declared bankruptcy. I played minor league baseball for a season -definitely NOT a high paying gig. Being 31 years old at the time and a catcher on an unaffiliated A-ball team, with a .241 batting average, I had no illusion of "going to the show." The baseball season ended and I was really and truly unemployed, but by choice this time.
I looked for a job but few seemed interested in hiring a former cop and minor leauge ball player. I didn't let that phase me much, however. As I had done before, I took stock of what I was really good at and what I liked to do, and started my own business based on those strengths and passions.
I had been an instructor at the law enforcement academy part time, and enjoyed teaching. I pretty much lived to hunt and fish, so combining those things led to licensed and bonded hunting and fishing guide. I did that as my sole full time means of support until 2001. In 2001, I started writing for a fly fishing magazine in California. After doing that for about a year, other managing editors started calling asking me to submit stuff. By 2006, I went from full time guide and part time writer to full time writer and part time guide.
Then I moved to Oklahoma when my wife got laid off from her gig in Southern California's homebuilding industry. I did some session guitar work to pay for the move and have enough of a "float" left to start from scratch. When we got to Oklahoma, a local hospital needed an electrocardiogram technician and I had done search and rescue in my L.E. career and had training in cardiac life support, so I was qualified to do the job. I took it, and am now an "employee" again, though I no longer work at the hospital.
I still make a few bucks from music, photography, and writing, so if my employment stint comes to a grinding halt, I'll probably be okay, whether I find another "real job," or not.
So yeah, I'd look for another gig. If I couldn't find one, I'd create one.
-JP
Poll