Confession: I Got Fired From My First "Real" Job. Here's How That's Working Out For Me.

I got fired from my job as a copywriter two weeks ago today.

After six months of working my ass off at an advertising agency, I was told that maybe the work just "wasn't for me." I'm not even sure that I disagree.

I'm confident in my writing ability, and I'm great with ideas, but creative writing is not my thing. I write about real issues, in the real world, that I'm passionate about. Pulling headlines from mid-air has never been what I do.

And yet, I'd be lying if I said it didn't sting to be told I wasn't good enough. It hurt to feel like I had failed where I had been so determined to excel.

Because the thing is, I liked my job. A lot. I legitmately loved going there everyday and I loved the work I did, and the people I worked with. I'm genuinely upset to not be working there anymore.

Landing the job in the first place was a coup. I wasn't qualified. Not really. But I was passionate, and eager and willing to learn, so they let me take a shot. But I botched it, apparently.

The metaphorical crash and burn...

If I'm honest? I don't think I got a fair shot at succeeding in the position. I made no illusions about my qualifications when I was hired, and I'm grateful to have been given a chance, but I was never given any kind of useful feedback that could have helped me to improve.

I didn't study advertising. I didn't know the first thing about writing copy. And all of that would have been fine if I'd been given some kind of guidance. I can be a self-starter, but there's no way I could have absorbed 4 years worth of information on my own without at least a cursory push in the right direction.

I was never given any real direction.

But honestly, it doesn't matter. No company owes me a job. No one owes me a continued salary, and from a pragmatic point of view, it didn't make sense to keep me on if they felt that they weren't getting a return on their investment. I'm at peace with that. It'll take some time for the sting to abate, but eventually it will pass. I'll learn from this experience, I'll find another job, and in a year or two I'll laugh about how stressed this entire situation made me.

Thing is, I'm still young and my life is still ahead of me, but in the moment, it's hard not to feel like I've failed at something. The job market is so poor, and jobs are so hard to come by. To get a great job and lose it... it's hard on the ego. I won't even lie to you.

I hadn't planned on writing about this here because I was initially so embarrassed, but reading this Thought Catalog piece early last week made me realize that this was a chance to learn something about myself, and to figure out a way to handle it with grace. I'm not sure I've done very well on the grace front, but I have learned a lot about growing up, being an adult, and the difficult decisions that come along with that.

But it's only been two weeks. Let's see what else the world has got to throw at me.