After 26 years, what do you do the next morning? That’s the part nobody really prepares you for. For most of my adult life, I knew where I worked, I knew what I did, I knew the people, I knew the problems, and I knew where I fit. There was a familiarity to that life that I probably took for granted after so many years, and then one day that chapter was ending while I sat at the same desk where I’m sitting right now.
Working from home made the whole experience strangely anticlimactic. There was no final drive home from the office, no box of belongings to carry to the car, and no walking out of a building knowing I wouldn’t be coming back the next morning. Mentally, I had been at work, but physically I was already home. One moment I was doing the job I’d done for years, and suddenly I was sitting there trying to comprehend that I needed to figure out what came next.
The truth is, I wasn’t completely surprised. For quite some time, I’d wondered what the future might hold for the kind of work I did. Technology was changing, the world of work was changing, and I’d thought more than once about whether it was time for me to make a move of my own. I never did. Part of that was loyalty and part of it was comfort, but a lot of it was fear. I knew what I was doing, I was good at it, and after spending most of my adult life in one world, I wasn’t entirely convinced that everything I’d learned there would mean anything somewhere else. Starting over scared the hell out of me, so I stayed.
That’s probably what bothered me most when the moment finally came. I wasn’t angry at anybody else nearly as much as I was angry at myself. I’d seen the possibility of change coming and still hadn’t taken the leap. Instead of grabbing the rope and swinging somewhere new, I waited until the rope was cut. I could beat myself up over that now, and for a little while I absolutely did, but losing my position turned out to be only one piece of what I was dealing with. At roughly the same time, I was trying to process something that hit me much harder emotionally: O’Charley’s was closing.
To understand why that mattered so much, you have to go all the way back to February of 2000. I was newly single, had moved to Hattiesburg to go to school, and because of an earlier experience with O’Charley’s through a former partner, I already knew where I wanted to work. I didn’t just need a job; I specifically wanted that job. I wanted to be part of that company. I was 21 or 22 when they hired me—I honestly can’t remember which anymore—but there are certain memories from those first few months that I can still see as clearly as if they happened last week.
My first St. Patrick’s Day is one of them. The place was absolutely alive. The restaurant and bar were packed, there was a portable bar set up in another section, and outside the parking lot had been transformed into this enormous celebration with a stage, live music, food and people everywhere. I was working the door, collecting admission and handing out tickets, and by the time everything finally wound down, I didn’t leave until somewhere around four in the morning. I was exhausted, probably smelled terrible, and thought the entire thing was the coolest damn thing in the world. I remember thinking that night, This is the coolest job I will ever have in my entire life.
At 21 or 22, what I meant was obvious. I meant the party, the music, the energy and the fact that somehow I was getting paid to be part of all of it. What I couldn’t possibly have known was how true that thought would become for reasons that had nothing to do with a St. Patrick’s Day party. Somewhere along the way, O’Charley’s stopped being simply the place where I worked and became woven into the story of my life.
A few years later, one of the regulars who came into the bar caught my attention. Her name was Holley. I was one of several bartenders, and although I’d see her when she came in, I didn’t really know her. She was extremely shy, which I completely misread as her being stuck-up and not wanting anything to do with me. Apparently that wasn’t enough to stop me, because eventually I worked up the confidence to talk to her. A few years after that first unforgettable St. Patrick’s Day, on another St. Patrick’s Day, I finally asked her out. Our first date was March 18, and the shy regular I once thought didn’t want to talk to me eventually became my wife, my partner and the person I’ve built my life with.
That’s why it’s impossible for me to separate O’Charley’s from the rest of my life. Take that company out of my story and I honestly don’t know what my life looks like today. Holley is the biggest example, obviously, but she’s far from the only relationship that came from those years. There are probably a hundred people from that world whom I know or still keep up with in some way. People moved away, changed companies, changed careers, started families and went in completely different directions, but somehow many of us kept finding one another. There’s even a Facebook group where people from those years still stay connected.
When word spread that O’Charley’s was closing and that my own chapter was ending, some of those people reached out to me. A few were people I hadn’t worked beside in years. They checked on me, encouraged me and told me that if there was anything they could do to help, I should let them know. That meant more to me than I can probably explain, because it reminded me that all those years had created something that survived beyond a restaurant or a job title. O’Charley’s was a beautiful business and a beautiful company, but for me it became something much more than that. It became a family.
I’m still grieving its loss. There’s a vacant O’Charley’s right outside my neighborhood that I drive past almost anytime I go anywhere, and now there’s a For Lease sign sitting out front. Every time I see it, there’s a little punch to the gut. I don’t just see an empty restaurant. I see pieces of my life—the people, the memories, and that 21- or 22-year-old kid who thought he’d stumbled into the coolest job in the world. I’ve found another job, and I’m genuinely excited about what comes next, but getting another job doesn’t replace what was lost. I got another job. I didn’t get O’Charley’s back. Those are two very different things.
Before I could get to the new job, though, I had to get through that first night.
I gave myself about 24 hours to feel sorry for myself, and I mean I really gave myself those 24 hours. I was frustrated, scared and angry with myself, and at some point I actually changed the blankets on my bed so I could get my big puffy blanket, curl up and disappear for a while. I’m not cleaning that part up for the story because that’s what happened. I felt like I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and sleep. Underneath all the optimism and jokes were some very real fears that I’d managed to keep at a distance until suddenly I couldn’t anymore.
I’d spent most of my adult life connected to one company, and now I had to find out what all those years meant to somebody else. Would another company value that experience? Would anybody even want me? I worried about my age, my weight and what starting over would look like. I wondered whether 26 years of experience in one world translated into anything at all outside of it. Imposter syndrome is an interesting thing because you can have decades of experience, know that you’re good at what you do, and still have a voice somewhere in your head asking, Yeah, but are you good at anything else?
Apparently 24 hours was about all the time I was willing to listen to that voice, because the next morning I woke up with a completely different mindset. I had two priorities. First, I wanted to take care of my people at work. Whatever I could do during the time I had left—helping, training, creating tools or sharing what I knew—I wanted to do it. At the same time, I needed to take care of my family and myself. Those became the two things that mattered most, and from that morning forward I jumped feet first and started running about five miles an hour. Yes, I realize jumping feet first and running five miles an hour at the same time doesn’t make much sense. It makes sense in my head.
My goal was to apply for five jobs every day. Sometimes I didn’t make five, especially in the beginning, because I was picky as hell. I didn’t want fear to make the decision for me and send me applying everywhere just because a job happened to be available. I wanted to land on my feet, but I also wanted to be selective about where I landed. Right out of the gate, I was shooting for the stars, so when the rejection emails started arriving, I wasn’t particularly shocked. Some of those jobs were reaches. There were probably a couple where, if they’d hired me, I might have questioned the judgment of the person doing the hiring.
What surprised me was how little the rejection bothered me. I expected it, so instead of treating every “no” as some kind of judgment on my worth, I treated the whole process as something I could learn. Applying was a skill. Résumé building was a skill. Interviewing was definitely a skill. I practiced, listened and learned. Neighbors shared advice and tricks of the trade, people helped me understand a hiring world I hadn’t needed to navigate in decades, and I soaked up as much information as I could. I wasn’t going to know everything on day one, but I could damn sure know more on day two.
Then something happened that I didn’t expect at all. I posted a statement on LinkedIn and turned on that little Open to Work banner. I wasn’t prepared for the response. People commented, sent messages, offered encouragement and told me they were willing to help. Some of them were people I didn’t even realize knew who I was, and that floored me. When you’re sitting at home wondering whether 26 years of experience means anything outside the world you’ve known, it becomes very easy to measure yourself by job descriptions and rejection emails. Suddenly, people were reminding me that my career hadn’t just been a collection of tasks. I’d made an impression. I’d built relationships. People remembered me.
The support and love I felt were overwhelming. It didn’t make all the uncertainty disappear, and it didn’t magically cure the imposter syndrome, but it did make me wonder whether maybe I hadn’t been seeing myself very clearly. For years I’d worried about whether what I brought to the table would have value somewhere else, while apparently there were people outside my little bubble who already saw value that I had been questioning.
There was another experience during the search that affected me in almost the opposite way. I attended a gathering with other people navigating job searches of their own, including some who had been searching much longer than I had. Hearing their experiences made the uncertainty of the process very real to me. I left shaken, not because anyone there had done anything wrong, but because I understood in a different way that there were no guarantees. I could work hard, do everything I thought I was supposed to do, and still have no idea how long the process would take. Oddly enough, that realization didn’t discourage me. It motivated me. I couldn’t control when somebody would say yes, how many rejection emails would arrive first or how long the process would take, but I could control what I did when I woke up the next morning. So I kept moving.
For all the applications I submitted, I ultimately interviewed with two companies. One process moved through several stages, including an online interview, recorded video responses and another interview. I was still waiting to see where that opportunity might lead when I interviewed in person with the second company. During that interview, I was told not to expect a quick decision. There were processes to go through, and I figured the turnaround might be similar to the other opportunity—probably about a week.
So I went home, sat down at this same desk and went back to applying for jobs.
About two hours later, my phone rang.
They offered me the job.
That call caught me completely off guard, but what surprises me even more when I think about it now is what I did next. I didn’t immediately say yes. I thanked them, told them I was excited about the opportunity and asked if I could have a little time to think about it. Not long before that, I’d been curled up under a giant puffy blanket wondering whether anybody would want me, and now somebody wanted me enough to call two hours after the interview—and I was telling them I needed a minute. Life is weird.
The first person I talked to was Holley, because of course it was. She’s my partner in this life, and although she told me, “It’s your job, it’s your choice,” I’ve never really looked at decisions like that as mine alone. In my mind, it’s our choice. My decisions affect her, our family and the life we’ve built together, so I wanted to know how she felt. Her advice was simple: go with your gut, trust your instincts, and know that she would support whatever decision I made.
I also called my former boss because I wanted the perspective of someone who knew me professionally, knew my work and understood what I brought to the table. She told me to go for it. She loved the opportunity for me, thought it fit my experience and personality, and felt I’d be wise to jump on it. Between those two conversations, I was getting reassurance from two people who knew very different sides of me. One knew the employee I had been for years, and the other knew the man underneath all of it. Both were telling me, in their own way, that the opportunity in front of me was worth trusting.
Of course, I still did what I always do when my brain has too many tabs open: I made a pros-and-cons list. My biggest concern was that I would accept the offer and then something else would come along with higher pay or stronger benefits. I hated even thinking of another opportunity as “better,” because better can mean a hundred different things, and money is only one part of a job. When I looked at the entire picture, though, I realized the opportunity in front of me was too good to pass up. Maybe something else would come along. Maybe it wouldn’t. What I knew was that if I passed on this opportunity while waiting for some hypothetical perfect one, I might regret it for the rest of my life.
And I don’t live for regrets.
So I said yes.
I wish I could tell you that somewhere in all of this I discovered a completely new version of myself, but I didn’t. If anything, I rediscovered the same Eric I’ve been since I was a kid. I want to see the good in people. I want to see the light. I’m hopeful, optimistic and about as glass-half-full as they come, but I’m not naive. I know that just because the glass is half full doesn’t mean the other half isn’t empty. I just choose to focus on the full side.
That doesn’t mean pretending bad things don’t happen. They do. Sometimes life hurts, sometimes you get scared, and sometimes you need to crawl under a giant puffy blanket and feel sorry for yourself for a little while. Sometimes you drive past an empty building with a For Lease sign and it breaks your heart all over again. The empty half of the glass is real. I just don’t want to spend my life staring at it.
I’ve said before that I want to be a beacon of joy for somebody who might be going through a rough patch, and even writing that makes me a little uncomfortable because I don’t think of myself as some inspirational person. I’m just a guy trying to figure this shit out like everybody else. But if somebody reads this someday while they’re sitting in their own version of that dark place and finds even a little bit of hope in it, then maybe sharing all of this was worth it.
I believe there’s always light, but I also think we sometimes make a mistake by acting like darkness is something we have to immediately escape. Sometimes the darkness is simply where you are right now. Maybe you have to let yourself feel it. Maybe you have to grieve what you lost. Maybe you need the big puffy blanket for a night. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that the glass has an empty half. In fact, maybe knowing the darkness is part of what allows us to appreciate the light so much when it finally starts breaking through again.
I still drive past that O’Charley’s near my neighborhood. I still see the For Lease sign, and I’m still sad when I see it. Maybe part of me always will be, because when I look at that empty building, I’m looking at far more than an empty restaurant. Somewhere in all those memories is a 21- or 22-year-old kid who had absolutely no idea what was ahead of him. He just knew he’d found the coolest job in the world. He didn’t know that a shy regular would eventually become his wife. He didn’t know he would collect friendships that would survive different jobs, different cities and different chapters of life. He didn’t know that the place would become intertwined with nearly his entire adult life, and he certainly didn’t know that one day he’d drive past an empty building and miss it this much.
If I could sit across from that kid today for five minutes, I don’t think I’d tell him how any of it turns out. I wouldn’t warn him about what’s coming, and I wouldn’t tell him to start worrying about the next job, the next opportunity or where he’ll be 26 years from now. I’d tell him to look around. Enjoy the noise. Remember the people. Stay a little longer. Take it all in, because one day even the things that seem permanent become memories.
I spent a lot of years thinking about what might happen next, and now I have a lifetime of memories I could easily spend just as much time looking back on. I don’t want to live in either place. I want to remember where I’ve been, look forward to where I’m going, and still be present enough to appreciate where I am.
So if I could tell that younger version of myself anything—and maybe remind the almost-50-year-old version sitting at this desk of the same thing—it would be pretty simple.
Embrace the moment. Don’t live in the future. Don’t live in the past.
Remember the now.