Top Stories

		RELATED
		Journalist's Survival Guide Part I: What to Do Before the Ax Falls

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.

OK, it's happened. You're losing your job. This is right up there at the top of the Stress-O-Meter, so don't sell it short as one of life's traumatic experiences. You're mad. You're sad. You're a little crazy. You want to punch somebody. You want to cry. You're not in touch with reality. All of these are true, and we know this because we've been through the cycle. Acknowledge it, accept it. You've been hit by a truck, and even if you could see the truck coming at you, it doesn't hurt any less.

• Before you're out the door, negotiate freelance work with your former employer. Can you write for your own section, or for others? Somebody's got to fill the space that will be left by departing staff, and it might as well be you. Sell an editor on a regular column or a longterm freelance gig.
  
• Negotiate to sweeten the deal. Maybe you can't change the money, but you can find ways to enhance your situation. Can you use stories you've written for the paper –- intellectual property –- as the basis for a book? What's the company offering in the way of outplacement help and assistance with resume writing?
  
• Get a letter of recommendation from your boss on company letterhead that you can scan in and post on your Web site.
  
• Get the word out. Don't just disappear. Let your professional contacts know what's happening to you, and make sure they know how to find you.
  
• Create a new business card with your cell phone number and Web site. You can design your own using the template in Word and print on stiff stock that breaks apart cleanly; or order them free from a company that provides them in exchange for a credit line on the back. This is part of the networking that's going to get you your next job.
  
• If people volunteer to make calls for you, to pass on your name to potential employers, let them do it. Encourage them to do it! Thank them for doing it!
  
• If somebody wants to buy you lunch, take them up on it.

• Make a list of the names, e-mails and phone numbers of key employees at your soon-to-be former employer who handle medical benefits, 401(k)s, payroll, stock options, employment verification. You'll have questions in the days ahead after you walk out the door.
  
• Don't sign anything until your lawyer and/or financial adviser have seen it. That includes severance paperwork, pension/401(k) paperwork and the COBRA (health insurance) arrangements.
  
• Pay attention to deadlines. It's easy, in the suddenly-unemployed state of shock, to forget to fill in the COBRA paperwork in time, and then you'll have to find health insurance elsewhere. (Professional associations sometimes offer insurance; check with the groups you belong to.)
  
• Don't take your 401(k) money in anything but an IRA rollover or you'll face big penalties.
  
• If you're laid off, you're eligible for unemployment. Don't be embarrassed about filing. This is insurance that your employer has been paying on your behalf since you started working there. You earned it; now use it. Sign up right away, since there's typically a waiting period of a couple of weeks before you get your first check. If you're getting severance, you may be ineligible initially, but go ahead and apply so you've got the paperwork done when your severance runs out if you're still unemployed.

• In a stressful time it's easy to overlook yourself. We say: Treat yourself well. That means getting enough sleep (but not sleeping all day or staying up all night); going to the gym or otherwise getting your exercise; eating right. Avoid daytime television and steady diets of Haagen-Dazs consumed direct from the container while seated on the couch in your pajamas.
  
• Watch the budget. It's a good time anyway to be a frugalista, but particularly if you're out of work. Cancel the lavish cable-TV packages, stay away from recreational shopping, avoid unnecessary major outlays. You need to make your cash last. A couple of $4 fancy coffee drinks at Starbucks every day start to turn into real money.
  
• Stay connected. Don't sit at home alone, cut off from friends. Socialize, go to the movies or a museum or a sports event or a concert (cheap seats, please). Accept invitations. Stay active in industry organizations (this is prime networking turf). You didn't do anything wrong. You're the poster child for a lousy economy. Mary Massingail found that volunteering at a soup kitchen helped her put her own problems in perspective.

Our Parting Thought

Oh, let's don't get maudlin.

You can yank a plant out of the ground, and if you do it roughly and rudely, it's called uprooting, and the plant seldom survives. Or you can remove a plant from where it's currently growing, carefully transplant it, fertilize and water it –- and it thrives and grows in ways it never could in its former too-small pot with too little nourishment. We'd like your job change –- and ours -– to feel more like a transplant than an uprooting. May we all thrive and blossom.

Okay, Your Turn

Everybody's an editor.

We invite you –- fellow journalists who, like us, have already cut the cake, given the last high-five and walked out the door –- to add, tweak, suggest, revise these suggestions. What did we forget? What do you know now that still-employed colleagues should know? Add your comments.

Sid Hastings, Denise Lockwood, John Markon, Mary Massingale, Jane Norman, Pete Skiba and Sharon Stangenes contributed to this report. Judy Stark took early retirement in August 2008 after 22 years at Poynter's St. Petersburg Times, the last 17 as homes and garden editor.