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This week's life note, workplace friendships,

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sometimes lifelong, sometimes not so much and sometimes that just has to be ok.

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Welcome to Life Notes from Chair 17.

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A podcast dedicated to sharing life stories,

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wisdoms and inspirations as we navigate life's journey,

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post chas to share thoughtful perspectives and insights from her own life journey.

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As well as those of special guests, contributors tune in for thoughtful conversations about lessons learned wisdoms,

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gained experiences, had and inspirations shared.

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So you never miss an episode. Now enjoy this week's episode.

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All righty. Welcome back in friends to another episode of Life Notes from Che 17.

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I'm your host, Ch and I thank you once again for finding me in this little corner of the podcast universe.

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As returning C 17 know,

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I always like to start off each episode. Thanking you for your continued support and tuning in each week.

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This does include our international listeners who have returned to check us out.

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Thank you so much for your support. But if you happen to be checking us out for the first time,

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maybe you have just found us on one of the major podcast platforms or via our website out on life notes from church 17 podcast.com.

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A warm welcome in to you.

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Thank you for checking this out. I hope you like what you hear and you will want to continue to tune in and a special.

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Thank you to those of you who have listened to our previous episode,

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which was another in our share the chair series and it was with Ellie Cornell uh as you might have guessed in the energy of that episode.

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It sure was a fun one.

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It was a true joy to chat with her.

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It was a real privilege and honor for me to chat with her long time fan.

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Girl that I am of her still.

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And I feel too what I have enjoyed hearing from some of you is that what she said?

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And how she said it is really inspiring whether that was talking about her artist journey,

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her actor journey, just sort of life journey.

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So that really, I'm glad it's resonating and it's,

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it's extra special. I feel like it's that it's coming from L A.

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So if you have not had the chance to check that out,

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I do really encourage you to do it. I know it is one of our longest episodes to date.

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So I think it clocks in at just over an hour.

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So I do realize that might take a bit more time to commit to listening to,

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but we cover a lot of ground and it is just,

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uh, I feel like the energy is really good in it and I hope that you are and would come away feeling pretty good after listening.

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That would be the hope anyways.

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So I will admit it's very hard to follow that episode.

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But I will try and I found,

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ironically, we did actually talk about what I'm going to talk about on this episode a little bit in the conversation with Ellie.

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And it was this concept of not only friendships that stem out of a working environment,

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but friendships that are lifelong versus not lifelong.

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And where this came out of in that episode was she is still very good friends with Danielle Harris who she co-starred with in both Halloween four and five.

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And that is going on well, over 30 years now.

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So I thought it was and then we,

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we also talked a bit about this concept of lifers or she calls them her posse these people that transcend time.

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We've done an episode here called Walking Through the Fire,

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which are folks that are in it with you no matter what.

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And for me,

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I actually had this episode,

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I'm recording now on my list to talk about with regards to the concept of how we can make lifelong friendships through a working connection no matter the industry.

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But also that there are times when that doesn't manifest quite in the way we thought it might.

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And this is sometimes even more true when we happen to be the one that is perhaps faced with an abrupt ending to that working environment.

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And where I, I had sort of got this inspiration prior to talking to Ellie was I had seen a recent linkedin Post because there are a lot of folks that are out of work right now.

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We've done a layoff episode.

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We've talked about the challenge of,

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you know, what that does to you when you do find yourself on the other side of a layoff notice.

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And then this particular linkedin Post,

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it was talking about the struggle that some of us feel when we see those who we worked closely with become really distant once we have received the notice that our jobs are being eliminated.

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And if you are the author of that post,

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I really actually loved the Post because I find it to be quite true.

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If you have seen the post, then you know what I'm talking about.

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But if you haven't, it was really written in a,

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in a lighthearted tone I would say.

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And it was saying, you know, hey,

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look, we've been laid off,

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we don't have a disease and we haven't died.

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We just aren't with the company anymore. So why does it feel?

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So arm's length, arm's distance with some of these people that,

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you know, we were working so closely with day in day out for a very specific period of time.

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Now, I'm obviously paraphrasing and this doesn't go down the path of talking about any legalities of why people might back away because there is a whole formal process by which people are laid off.

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And sometimes, you know,

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there's, there's just a procedure that might influence or potentially affect how people engage with that laid off employee.

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We're not going to go down that path in this episode because I'm talking more about the human connection and that sudden abruptness of not having it there because as I was reading through some of the comments in that post,

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it seemed as if a lot of folks were sharing their own experience too,

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that they had seen that happen to them or they were now just experiencing it for the first time.

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And so I wanted to talk about it because I,

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I've had it and I've seen it and I've been on both sides and it might be hard though for some folks who've never had this happen to you to understand how this feels.

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But it is really true that at times the shift in our working friend circles can happen through no fault of our own or not through anything that we knowingly did,

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except maybe to potentially be that person that now is facing,

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not having their job anymore because it's been eliminated.

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And I am using a very specific example for those of us in working place environments where being laid off is a,

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a regular occurrence or already occurrence.

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Sadly, but true, but this may not apply to all working environments and departures in some working environments might differ.

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And it certainly differs when we see someone voluntarily leave because we are oftentimes can be celebrating some new chapter that they're going to start or maybe it's a new job someplace else.

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And so it's very much congratulatory.

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We do the whole, let's get together and celebrate thing.

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And even in that instance where it's congratulatory,

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although we have the best of intentions to remain as close as we were while we were working together,

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something may not carry over outside of that workplace structure that defined the relationship from the start and in our living through a layoff episode,

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I mentioned the importance I feel of being able to lean into our networks to find support and to really not be left alone in isolation to sort it all out on her own.

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And it can be sometimes very surprising how silent some of the corners of that network can get,

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which is the lesson I learned a while back.

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And the one I wanted to share today when I was facing a layoff from another company that I'd really enjoyed working for it.

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Now, again, this might resonate with you.

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It might not. It's funny as I sat down to record this episode,

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I had just read an article and I'll see if I can find it and post it in the show notes that was talking about someone who had worked,

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I think it was for Google. And she was talking about how she was.

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She had kind of defined her life there and then she was laid off and it was sort of that re evaluation of now what,

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what happens once I've done that and that structure is gone.

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And I had a similar thing. I had inadvertently built an entire network and identity around this particular company and the people in it.

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And at the time, I didn't really think much of it because you don't when everything is going really,

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really well, you never really think you're gonna be on the outside looking in until you are.

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And then those, some of those folks are just not there anymore.

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Save for, let's say,

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I'll say a selected few who really are going to carry with us beyond that particular working environment.

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And it was really hard for me at the time.

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And as I moved on from that part of my career journey and as the years have gone on what I have noticed and again,

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just my opinion that in certain circumstances,

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it does feel like those lifers as Jodie Whittaker likes to call them or Ellie called them her posse,

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right? And members of her posse, I feel like the lifers are becoming increasingly rare and sometimes we think someone's going to be in the lifer category or in the posse category.

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And then suddenly there's a change and it's very unexpected and they aren't and it catches us off guard.

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And this made me think about a statistic that was thrown around a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic where we saw our,

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our circles, let's just call it, our circles could be personal,

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could be, work could be both got very targeted.

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They got a lot smaller, we had to hunker down to get through it.

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And so we had to get very selective with who we interacted with,

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particularly on a family or personal level.

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You know, people had bubbles, remember that.

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But we also shifted how we worked.

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We became super distributed,

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very remote. So the whole concept of gathering and places and coming together changed on both sides of the personal and working spectrum and that has partially remained,

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right? It's not a huge stretch to say that in this post pandemic world,

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there are these external factors that have and did forever change how we connect and who we connect with.

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We still have distributed workplaces where teams are hybrid,

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maybe you're in the office, maybe you're not, maybe you saw some friends that were in your personal circle,

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just not come back after the pandemic or after we started building post pandemic normal,

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right? There's there is still this combination of factors that was driven by that particular event that I think has affected how we come together still and who we bring into our world and who we don't.

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But even still, if we take all these factors,

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I think into consideration, it doesn't make it any easier to see those connections that we do make even now inside workplaces dissipate through no fault of our own.

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And if you again,

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have not had this happen to you and you have been able to maintain all those connections with those you formally worked with,

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especially even if you have been handed a layoff notice,

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that's a real gift you are,

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I would say in rare air and if they have all become part of your life,

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posse, we'll just combine Jody and Ellie's lifers and posse together.

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If they have become part of your life, posse,

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I feel like that's even more of a gift.

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But if you have found yourself somewhat surprised by just how quickly some of that camaraderie that you really were leaning into and relied on you find that,

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that dwindles just, no,

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you're not alone. You aren't going through it alone.

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You're not the only one that has had that sort of emotional wallop.

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Let's call it because honestly,

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I didn't expect it to happen to me back in the day and then it did.

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And I confess that I found myself wondering for a while why it didn't seem to click the same once I was outside that workplace versus when I was inside that workplace.

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And as it turns out for me,

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I had inadvertently based all of those connections on that which was defined within the company confines or within the workplace confines,

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not which I defined on my own.

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And that is totally on me for not recognizing this and for taking that built in structure for granted until it just wasn't there anymore.

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And there was nothing left to take for granted.

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And I will say I have to give my friend a lot of credit who she was actually the one that identified this a few years before I did when she was in a similar situation and said to me that she realized she had built up her entire social structure around the people she worked with.

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And when she found herself no longer within that particular workplace,

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that structure fell down and it left her trying to find out or figure out how to build a new structure on her own.

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And I watched her do that and I admit I had to do it as well.

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And I really had to think about those connections that we do make through a workplace environment and whether they will translate beyond that consistency of seeing those folks every day,

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you're in meetings with them, you're working on projects with them in some situations,

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you're still going out to lunch with them, you're going to happier or whatever,

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it might be. Some of those connections genuinely will stand the test of time.

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It doesn't matter if you're laid off, you're not laid off,

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you're leaving the company on your own, you're leaving the workplace on your own.

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You're taking a sabbatical. It makes absolutely no difference.

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They are part of your life posse however far away we move from that first moment in which we met each other,

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which just so happened to have been in the working environment that supported it.

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But sometimes they don't stand the test of time.

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They don't make it into that life posse. And that doesn't reveal itself until after we aren't working together anymore.

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And I'm not talking about sort of those life changes that sometimes create space time and distance because that can also affect how we stay in contact with anyone,

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whether it's a working friendship or otherwise.

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Now, these are just going to be some of those workplace environment,

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folks that they just fall away either by choice or maybe by mutual shifts and change and,

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you know, a personal journey or a professional journey.

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And sometimes we'll understand these reasons and sometimes we won't,

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um what I've had to learn is that those again,

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who really are meant to be in our lives for long periods of time are the ones that stay with us.

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They are part of that posse. They walk through the fire with us and the connection that we make transcends really however and wherever we made it in the first place and like we talked about with Ellie,

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it can be put on pause it can be rekindled as if no time has elapsed and nothing has changed.

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You pick it up as if you just saw them yesterday.

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I happen to have several of those in my life and I love them because it's effortless and it just feels good to have the connection even if it's,

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you know, every six months. But for those that aren't going to be in that category,

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that life posse category, maybe they're only temporary.

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We do have to go through sort of this.

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You could maybe say it's a grieving process or just the acceptance that they are part of a different chapter of our life journey.

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And when that chapter comes to an end,

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we have to be ok with it and let it go when we try to reach out.

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And there is that feeling like the connection is suddenly tempered,

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it's not working like it was something feels off,

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maybe it's lost its luster,

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it seems arm's distance, maybe one sided.

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And I've just had to take that as a sign that it's potentially we're moving to next,

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we're shifting to next. We leave the door open,

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potentially to reconnect. But we acknowledge that in the moment,

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it's not what it was and we're giving herself to be ok and have the permission to look and focus on what is.

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Now, I admit this sounds super easy to say and much harder to do given the feelings that are often involved that make us wonder or question the entire situation,

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especially if we never know why they don't become part of our lifelong posse.

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But again, sometimes that just has to be ok.

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And for me, on my life journey,

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I've just started to pay much more attention to this and reflect on the foundation on which I build this camaraderie,

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both on a personal level, but also on a professional level.

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And you know, if we are lucky enough to surround ourselves with those who will transcend that space and time in which we work with them and allow us to continue to define our connection outside of that workplace structure from where it might originate.

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I really cherish that and I really,

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I really am grateful for when that does happen.

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And I know that I'm continuing to strive to build those.

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Perhaps you are as well. Just know that you are not alone though,

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if you have to close a chapter with those who you may have thought were always going to be a part of your life journey,

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they technically are, they are just in a specific chapter,

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not all the chapters. And with that,

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as always, I ask you to be kind to yourself,

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take it one hour at a time,

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one day at a time and I'll see you next time.

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Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Life Notes from chair 17.

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Remember to follow and subscribe. So you never miss an episode.

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We'll see you next time.