Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
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I lost my job in early 2025, and at first, I thought it was the end of the world – or at least the part I had built a good part of my identity around.
As an older-ish millennial, I’ve always had a strong work ethic. I prioritized work constantly, felt responsible for everything and carried guilt like a phone full of screenshots I’ll never organize but refuse to delete. I tried to run the mad race of parenting a young child, managing a home, keeping up with social obligations, avoiding ultraprocessed foods and getting in my 10,000 steps – all while answering Teams messages faster than a teenager on TikTok.
It was exhausting.
I worked long hours, skipped dinners and mentally labelled every shower thought as “high priority.” I genuinely loved my work and my team, and I prided myself on doing things well. Every small win gave me a hit of dopamine that made the whole cycle addictive. I wore my stress like a fitness tracker: the higher the numbers, the better I thought I was doing.
Then one morning, I was let go. Provincial budget cuts – just like that.
Luckily, I have a supportive partner and didn’t need to find something immediately. Even with the privilege to coast for a few months, I couldn’t relax right away. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d still wake up at 6 a.m. out of habit. I felt guilty for relaxing. I missed my performance metrics. I missed feeling needed.
But something shifted.
One afternoon, I picked my daughter up from school. Not in the usual rushed, “get-in-the-car-we’re-already-late” kind of way – but slowly. We walked home together. No e-mails pinging. No podcast trying to “optimize” my parenting. Just … walking.
And I heard it. Our feet on gravel. The rustle of trees. Cars zooming by and the occasional screech of tires. But, somehow, even those sounds felt real, grounding, peaceful even. I felt untied from the pace of the world for a moment, fully present.
We stopped at Tim Hortons. She got a sprinkle donut the size of her face. We lingered at the park. Blew on dandelions. Chatted with neighbours a little too long. Wandered into the library to browse books. We sat on a bench, no time frame in mind, people-watching: “That guy looks like he just realized he forgot his keys.” “That lady’s wearing pajama pants and heels – respect.”
It felt like vacation vibes – but we were three blocks from home.
Over the next few days, we kept walking. We took the long way to nowhere. Past a pond where some aggressively territorial geese reminded me who really runs these streets in Ontario. We’d pause for ice cream, admire sidewalk chalk drawings that had definitely seen better days and stop to observe what my daughter calls her favourite animal: the humble, cute little potato bug. Watching my daughter’s joy, her curiosity about absolutely everything – from puddles to excavators – and realizing this is how life is supposed to feel.
We’ve built this go-go-go culture like it’s a virtue. But humans didn’t evolve to sprint through life with Teams notifications in one hand and a protein bar in the other. We evolved to wander. To cook slowly. To tell stories. To read for hours without checking our phones. To make soup and actually taste it before drowning it in sriracha and moving on.
These past few months, cooking stopped feeling like a task to “get done” by 6:15 p.m. It became something I enjoyed. I finally understood why people say “cooking is love made visible.”
I even started reading The Lord of the Rings – a book that had been sitting on my to-read list for years, too dense for the life I used to rush through. Now, I’m making time for the stories I once thought I was too busy to enjoy – and for the parts of myself I’d quietly left behind.
I’m not saying I don’t need to work. Bills still exist, and my daughter still thinks money grows on credit cards. But I am saying that I won’t go back to the version of me that put work above everything.
Losing my job gave me back parts of myself I didn’t even know were missing. Joy in the in-between moments. The space to feel wonder and the quiet satisfaction of doing nothing with someone you love. And the understanding that love doesn’t have to look like self-sacrifice – it can look like a slow walk home, a geese standoff or the smell of perfectly toasted garlic.
If you’ve been living life in fast-forward, maybe this is your sign to press pause. Take the long way home. Read a book just because. Make dinner like it’s an art project, not a checklist. You don’t need to wait for a layoff to slow down – you can choose to live differently now. Because life isn’t meant to be squeezed in around the edges of work. It’s meant to be lived.
This isn’t just a pause – it’s a reset. From now on, life will come first. Family will come first. And work? It’ll have to catch up.
Sonia Upadhya lives in Milton, Ont.
