Believing in Matt Foley and Other Questionable Career Moves
Finding motion when standing still felt safer
When I lost my job of over a decade, I thought I was facing the end of stability. What I found instead was something I hadn’t felt in years: freedom.
This is a story about masks, burnout, awkward silences, a Funko Pop, and the strange, quiet rebellions that keep us moving forward.
Freedom Tastes Like Oxygen
I got the call just before Thanksgiving. The boutique furniture shop I’d managed for more than a decade was closing two weeks before Christmas. My team and I were out. Management tossed me two weeks’ severance — a gut-punch gift-wrapped in insult. Fear, anxiety, and anger tangled in my chest. The stability I’d always worked so hard to maintain was gone. The ground crumbled beneath my feet.
Yet on our final day — Friday the 13th, naturally — I walked out of that beloved little store with my framed Ted Lasso “Believe” poster under my arm and felt something snap free. Like Fight Club’s nameless narrator straightening his spine once he quits the cubicle, oxygen suddenly reached corners of my lungs I’d forgotten existed.
The days that followed were a paradoxical euphoria. My life was in pieces: no income, a sewer-line repair bill the size of Mordor, and the holidays barreling toward us. And still, I felt good — better than I had in years. Freed from the daily grind, I resurrected back-burner projects and side hustles. But instead of chaos, my rebellion wasn’t Tyler Durden’s soap empire; it was piles of books, a fledgling blog, and finding community on social media.
Learning to Breathe
But here’s the part I didn’t expect: It wasn’t just the freedom from deadlines, spreadsheets, or corporate holiday cheer that made me feel so damn good. It was the mask. Or more accurately — the absence of it.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d been masking until I didn’t have to anymore. The forced smiles. The scripted small talk. The constant calibration of tone and eye contact and energy, just to seem “normal.” I hadn’t just been clocking into a job, I’d been clocking into a performance. Every. Single. Day.
And when that performance ended, when the curtain finally dropped, I felt… lighter. Not just in the “I’m unemployed and sleeping in” kind of way, but in a deep, spinal sense. I wasn’t just out of work. I was, for the first time in years, out of character.
A couple weeks into my forced “vacation,” I started filming TikTok videos. Of course, I’d recorded my wife and kids during events and outings, but I’d never really sat on that side of the camera myself. The first video I posted — a rapid-fire review of my ten favorite books that year — felt great… until I watched it. Who was this guy? I saw a version of myself I’d never really met before. Someone stiff and awkward. And yet, somehow, unmistakably me.
I did a couple more takes, swallowed my pride, and hit post. And you know what? People engaged. A few comments mentioned liking the rapid-fire style, others just talked about the books. It wasn’t a viral sensation, but it was connection without the usual cost.
For the first time in my life, I could be the real me — not the edited version I trotted out for customers or coworkers, not the one carefully curated to blend in or deflect awkward questions. There was no tightrope to walk, no smile to fake. Just me, as I am, without the draining calculations that came with every in-person interaction.
These strangers weren’t right in front of me. All I had to do was respond to their comments, and that was easier than scrambling to decode someone’s expression in real time.
But offline? Reality was waiting.
The Digital Masquerade
I was unemployed for just over two months. Not long enough for most people to panic, but just long enough for me to unravel.
There was the LinkedIn ridiculousness. Updating my profile. Making connections with people I barely knew. Polishing my resume. Filling out a thousand variations of the same application for a thousand different jobs. And doing it all behind a digital mask — a polished, smiling version of me I didn’t recognize, being judged by a thousand other polished, smiling strangers.
It was like scrolling through a corporate masquerade ball: every feed another glossy veneer, every post a rehearsed line delivered with a forced grin. And, of course, I played along; even my profile picture was touched up.
The End of Recess
Every job interview was a disaster. I knew I could do the work. I’d done the work. But interviewing? That was an entirely different performance. The small talk. The “tell me about yourself” that always felt like a pop quiz on my own personality. The smiling — but not too much. The eye contact — but not too much.
Masking through an interview felt like juggling knives on a unicycle while pretending the whole thing was totally natural.
Sometimes I’d leave an interview and sit in my car, completely numb. I’d go over everything I’d said, every pause too long, every sentence I wished I could edit. I wasn’t being rejected for lack of experience. I was being rejected for an inability perform the normalcy they were really testing for.
Still, even with all the pitfalls, living my day-to-day life relatively mask-free was the most liberating experience I’d had since childhood. I had unlimited hours to explore hyperfixations and hobbies, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more productive in my life.
But life only lasts so long. And it doesn’t come cheap.
Eventually, I had to accept the only job offer I received — after being ghosted by every other employer following each disastrous interview.
And that, my friends, is how I became a car salesman.
Losing Myself Again
I’ve always been a car guy. My dad owned a small dealership when I was growing up, so automobiles have been a steady, comforting thread through my life. Interviewing for a client advisor position at a luxury dealership was a breeze. I got to info-dump about cars with a stranger, and somehow the more I gushed, the more qualified I sounded.
I got the job.
Now I was back in the workforce. No problem, right?
Wrong.
I seemed to have misplaced my mask.
Ten weeks of unemployment. That’s all it took to undo everything I’d learned through a lifetime of pretending to be someone else.
New coworkers. New managers. New clients. New systems to memorize. New social codes to figure out without a decoder ring.
And there I sat at my desk, quiet while others talked and laughed and bonded effortlessly.
I even tried to make my desk feel more like mine. One day, I brought in a Matt Foley Funko Pop-the old Chris Farley character from Saturday Night Live. It felt perfect: a goofy little reminder not to end up “living in a van down by the river.” Maybe it would even be a conversation starter.
I set him on my desk, smiling to myself.
Nobody recognized him.
One coworker pointed and asked, “Is that supposed to be you?”
I laughed it off and said, “He’s a really famous motivational speaker — you should look him up.”
Spoiler alert: nobody ever did.
It was a perfect microcosm of my workday: reaching out, hoping for connection, and realizing I was speaking a language no one else understood.
Tiny Rebellions
I didn’t stage a dramatic walkout.
I didn’t quit.
I stayed.
But I started finding tiny ways to breathe again.
Most days, the showroom is still slow. So I sit at my desk and chip away at personal projects — writing, building out calendars, sketching future plans. It’s not glamorous. Nobody’s paying me for it. But it feels like reclaiming a little space inside the endless waiting.
When the air gets too heavy, I take a walk around the lot. I pace between rows of parked cars, scanning the horizon for ups, pretending the next turn might be different.
Small talk still feels like trying to pick a lock with frozen fingers. My coworkers are younger, sharper-edged, tied together by references and rhythms I don’t share. Maybe that camaraderie isn’t missing — maybe it was never meant for me.
So I study. I write. I test-drive cars when the opportunity comes. I work leads. I answer emails. I sit with the silence instead of letting it swallow me.
It’s not perfect. Some days it still feels like drowning in slow motion.
But it’s motion.
And that has to count for something.
Redefining Success
For years, success meant stability. It meant clocking in, doing the job, fitting the mold.
I don’t know if I believe that anymore.
Success now looks quieter.
It looks like showing up even when the mask feels heavier than armor.
It looks like carving out moments of authenticity in places that demand a performance.
It looks like finding motion, even if it’s slow.
It looks like believing in myself, even when nobody else knows who I am, or why I’m sitting here with a Matt Foley action figure cheering me on.
I’m still doing the things that kept me afloat when I was unemployed — the writing, the side projects, the quiet building of something more.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe success isn’t just about surviving the day job.
Maybe it’s about refusing to let the day job be the only thing that defines me.
I’m hoping the rest of it will grow. I’m hoping it turns into more.
And hey — there’s always retirement to look forward to.
But for now?
For now, I’m moving.
And that’s enough.
Originally published at .
