What to know when you don't know.

It was 8am when the meeting invite popped up on my calendar for later that morning. I knew what it was. The Wall Street Journal had scooped that PwC was laying off 1,600 of its Products & Technology group. The article was published on September 11, 2024. Caught off guard, PwC scrambled to get ahead of it. The president sent out a firmwide memo. But by the time it hit our inboxes, everyone had seen the article. In his memo, he used corporate speak for the impending layoff. "An element of resource action," he called it. "Something that is never easy." He ended his email by saying he'd be remiss if he didn't commemorate the colleagues PwC had lost in the 9/11 attack.

As the creative director, copy, I was responsible for producing 200+ new P&T web pages. Less than a month after the WSJ article, my team and I had completed the project. There was nothing left for me to do, and I didn't have a boss anymore. The man who ran the larger creative group had taken early retirement after a heart attack. The woman who ran my smaller group, focused on Products & Technology, had left months in advance, perhaps sensing what was coming. There was no one left to protect me. Not that they could have.

My "resource action" meeting had been scheduled by a woman temporarily assigned as my stand-in boss while the org "figured out how we'd all be restructured." Only months before we'd had a one-on-one in which she'd told me how imminently valuable I was to the organization. My expertise would be helpful in countless ways.

I clicked to join the Teams meeting. She was there, waiting, maniacally smiling, as though we were catching up after I had taken a restful vacation. "How are you," she said cheerily.

"Considering what's about to happen," I said, "not well."

In less than 20 seconds, she broke the news and handed me over to HR, who joined the call almost magically as soon as I'd been set adrift. In five more minutes, I was off the call. In 10 more minutes, my laptop was bricked.

And thus began my own pink-slipped journey.

People often ask "What do you do?" when they first meet someone. Sometimes that go-to question can be unsettling. Like after being pink-slipped.

I first encountered the question on a weekend fly fishing trip. An architect. A conservation lawyer. A CEO. A financial advisor. A fly fishing guide. An off-the-grid former Hershey's factory worker. And me. When someone suggested we go around the raging fire pit under the stars in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I looked deep into my stainless steel tumbler of bourbon, and thought, "Fuck."

If you and I are close, I'll go anywhere conversationally with you. If I don't know you, it all depends. But one thing's for sure, I don't want to give you a tour of my identity's construction site. At times, I may create a little peephole, the way developers do for curious passersby on the sidewalk. The conversation was moving clockwise, getting closer and closer to me.

I was struggling with what to reveal. Telling my inner circle was uncomplicated. Their perception of me was already fixed. But it's not an easily answered question when you're trying to listen, talk, and think at the same time. I wanted to provide cover for my reputation and my process, which meant not getting into the details.

By the time the question got to me, I still didn't have an answer. I knew what I'd been. But I was still figuring out what exactly I was going to be. "That's a great question," I said. "I'm..." I didn't know how to finish the sentence.

I could see the fire reflecting in all of their eyes as they waited for me to finish.

"He's great at cliffhangers," said the CEO, who was a fan of the business I was creating. "Exactly what you'd expect for a creative director who's a master at language."

"That might be overstating it. But I do like words."

"So let's just call him the word guy," said another friend. "He likes words. He helps companies with words."

I raised my tumbler. "I can sign off on that."

At that moment, I was thinking about starting my own company. What that company was, exactly, was still evolving. It took me many more months to sort through my thoughts, to understand what I was creating. What I didn't know that night was that I didn't need the right answer. I just needed one that allowed construction to continue at its own pace, unobserved. I'd let people know when I was ready to cut a ribbon.