After pumping out ten blogs a week for the past two years, you’d think I’d be over the putting my thoughts to digital paper. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case because I still have a lot to say.  Most of you reading this most likely know the big life change I experienced a few weeks ago and are here to get the details about what went down.

If you somehow stumbled upon this blog while searching for handsome pornography, I’ll fill you in: My name is Gavin Eddings and I’ve been a radio DJ professionally for the past six years. A little over two weeks ago, that tenure came to an unexpected end when I joined the ranks of the unemployed. If you are turning to this blog in hopes of me talking shit about my former employer, you’re unfortunately going to have to look elsewhere. There’s a part of me that would love to dish dirty about every wrongdoing I feel that I endured through the years, but that’s not going to get my job back. It’s just going to make me look like a petty asshole and make me unattractive to any future employers.

Instead, I’ve decided to start this blog as a way to express myself more honestly and openly. I’m not trying to be some beacon of hope for anyone else going through a tough time, but maybe that’s what happens. I don’t have all of the answers and even starting this blog might be an incredible act of narcism. Before, I was getting paid to pump out posts about whatever my thoughts were on a movie trailer or whatever selfie I took. Now I’m doing it for free? What makes me so interesting that you’d want to check back to this blog every once-in-awhile ? I don’t know yet. Maybe you do, but I don’t.

The past few weeks have been tough. At times, I’ve felt like I’ve lost a part of what made me unique or interesting. It’s weird to have the thing that you’ve been doing most of your adult life suddenly taken away from you. You question if you were ever actually good to begin with or if this was the universe’s way of assuring me that “Yes, you actually were shitty at your job and you were finally found out.”

I’ve talked with my therapist in-depth about combating the negative self-talk that I sometimes do. When something goes awry in my life, not only do I let that get me down, but it can often snowball into feeling guilty about things I’ve done or people I’ve let down from years ago. The weight of these feelings are often smothering but, with help, I’ve learned to combat my own negative tendencies. One thing that I’ve started doing is keeping a gratitude list. Every night, I open a word document on my computer and type in ten things that I am grateful for that happened during the day. These don’t all have to be amazing – sometimes you can be grateful that the Taco Bell line wasn’t long and nobody messed up your order. Once you can find joy in the smallest moments of life, the bad things don’t seem so bad. It’s all about clinging to the good things in the face of the shitty and awful. I realized that I still have friends, family, and a lot of people that care about me. I slowly started to let myself off the hook when I’d feel down on myself. I turned to things that I had neglected such as performing stand-up. I launched a podcast with an amazing co-host who is going through the same thing that I am. By taking the time to be grateful, I learned something very important:

I lost a job. I didn’t lose myself.