Episode
I Volunteered to Lose My Job.
- Published
- Aug 15, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 97
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Summary
Imagine calling your manager and asking to be laid off. You're the primary breadwinner for a family of six. Two kids in college. And you're volunteering to walk away — with no plan, no next step, nothing but a severance package and a gut feeling that staying would break you completely. At some point you've probably asked: What do I do when the career I built my identity around stops feeling like me? When did success start feeling like a costume I can't take off? And what does it even mean to start over when you've been achieving since you were fourteen? Tracy Hill grew up solidly middle-class, watching her mother — a computer systems analyst — handle every penny with precision, and her father — a cartoonist who drew for Playboy and The New Yorker for forty years — ride the creative ebb and flow. She inherited her mother's drive and her father's love of beauty. By fourteen she was already working. By her twenties she was climbing in commercial real estate. By midlife she was a Fortune 500 marketing executive, global product marketer, primary breadwinner — and completely numb. When layoffs came during COVID, colleagues called her crying. She felt something she wasn't expecting: envy. Not of their job loss — but of their freedom. So she called her manager and asked to be on the list. She leapt with a severance package and no net. What she did next surprised even herself. She sat still. She went to her back deck and listened. For the first time in decades, she heard birds — really heard them. Cardinal. Bluebird. Robin. And as the stillness deepened, she began to come alive again. She started noticing what she loved: beauty, in every form. A sunset. A beautiful notebook. A meaningful conversation. She started searching for what she called her "beautiful fixes" — small momen…