It’s all too easy to let an unexpected obstacle set you back.

After two decades with the same employer, I was feeling pretty secure.

I’d borne witness to several reorgs. I’d survived multiple rounds of RIFs and layoffs over the years, watched friends and colleagues forced to move on. I’d even made a strategic internal move to a different team when the outsourcing goblin reared its head.

But that last purge, the biggest one I’d seen: it caught me.

And I wasn’t prepared. You never really are.

The Wrong Kind of Busy

Afterward, I tried to stay “productive.” I fell into all the tried-and-true job search activities because that’s how things had always been done. The things that look like progress but don’t really lead anywhere. And when that didn’t work, I retreated into my usual escapist distractions: games, videos, depressing music…

I doom-scrolled the job sites, which just reinforced that the job market was the worst it had been in years.

When you’re in the endless scroll, inertia builds.

Days turned into weeks, then months. I’d stopped leaving the house.

Step 1: Open the Door

As summer approached, a friend reached out. A public school teacher with his first Summer-School-free year ever, he invited me to join a local fitness center with him. He was on a health kick and figured some exercise might do me good, too.

My knee-jerk reaction was a hard pass. Fortunately, my wife (I’m legally obligated to mention that she’s much smarter than me) “gently” nudged me to reconsider.

Relax, this isn’t a story about the life-changing power of physical fitness (though to be fair, I might recommend it now).

The real benefit was something much simpler: just getting out of the house. A short drive across town. Time spent with a friend, in a public place, around other people.

The journey doesn’t always start with a grand gesture. Sometimes you just need to get out of your chair.

One Small Step

And now, that first small step has led me to a much better place.

I’m no longer sitting in my home office day after day looking at the same four walls. I’m having meaningful conversations with new people and reconnecting with old friends. I’m still in transition, but I’m no longer smelling the stink of stagnation.

As an added bonus, I’ve even lost a little weight.

And it all started with that one small step.

Tell Me if You’ve Heard This One

So far, we have two clichés:

“The longest journey starts with the first step.”
“You’re not in this alone.”

We’ve all heard these a thousand times before. Familiarity is easy to ignore.

I’ll counter that with a third cliché:

“There’s a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.”

We’ve all heard this one, too. And we also ignore it. All too often, we know what we need to do. We just don’t do it. I fell into that trap, and had to be pulled out.

Never be too ashamed to ask for help. And have the humility to accept help when it’s offered.

When we tell ourselves we don’t need help, we’re almost always wrong.