Who are you when you no longer have a job title?
The title was useful shorthand. It was never the whole answer.
The Journal
Life doesn’t follow the outline.
Essays, reflections, and practical guides for the days after the plan changes. Read what meets you where you are.
Starting over at 40 when this wasn’t the plan
The difficult part is often the distance between where you are and where you thought you would be.
When you’ve moved and have nobody to call yet
Belonging rarely arrives at once. It gathers through ordinary, repeated contact.
Rebuilding confidence after a layoff, one ordinary task at a time
Confidence can return as evidence: small, real things you can point to and say you handled.
How to ask for support when you don’t need advice
Clear language for asking someone to listen, keep you company or help with one practical thing.
What to say when the advice keeps coming
Short, direct scripts for stopping unwanted advice without turning your boundary into a debate.
Grieving a job you didn’t even like
You can be relieved it is over and still miss the life that came with it.
An empty calendar is not an empty life
What happens when the meetings disappear, and your time is finally your own?
What to do in the first 72 hours after an unwanted change
Protect what needs attention today. Give the bigger questions a little more time.
The urge to perform resilience for an audience
You are allowed to feel a thing without turning it into content.
The difference between support and advice
Sometimes the most useful thing someone can offer is their company.
Your skills did not resign with you
A job can end. The things you learned how to do come with you.
The first twenty-five cents
Day-labor jobs. Websites built at night. Robert Nichols on the small experiment that followed a job loss.
Three ways into the writing.
Explore the series01 / Personal accounts
After the change
Personal accounts of what ended, what remained, and what helped. Begin with Robert’s own experience of losing the income his family depended on.
Start reading02 / Scripts & practical guides
Words for the conversation
Practical language for asking someone to listen, setting a boundary, and explaining only what you want to explain.
Start reading03 / Author’s notes & book excerpts
From Robert’s notebook
The experiences behind the books, alongside selected passages to read slowly and return to.
Start reading