Epicurus In The Unemployment Line

What’s Terrible Is Easy To Endure

Hey substack,

It’s been a little bit longer than normal since I last wrote a post. The reason why is because I got laid off at work.

This, on top of the fact that my family was already moving two time zones away next month, puts a lot of stress on my brain. I don’t really feel like talking about deep philosophy at the moment, so I hope you’ll pardon my writer’s block.

I feel like I did during the opening months of the pandemic: A low-level feeling of stress, anxiety, and shock that makes me more inclined to binge YouTube than create anything. Undoubtedly, this will pass eventually. Writing this post is progress.

Why I Got Laid Off

I feel the need to say this somewhere, to get it off my chest. I was not laid off because of my performance. I was an employee in good standing, likely earning the maximum merit pay increase for performance this year - as I have done every year at my job. I always met my goals. I always did good work. I never turned in anything late, in fact I was known for getting things done early.¹

One of the most jarring things of this whole experience was that I was approved to transition to full remote work on a Wednesday (because I was an employee in good standing), flew to Denver on a Thursday, toured an apartment on a Friday, signed a lease on a Saturday, flew back to DC on a Sunday, and was laid off on that Monday. If I was laid off due to performance, I wouldn’t have been approved for remote work in the first place.²

I was laid off indirectly due to USAID cuts last year. It’s hard to overstate how much harm those did to NGOs such as the one I worked for, which have been (basically) in a constant state of reorganization ever since.

Still, it wasn’t all USAID cuts. Reflecting on my five years, I don’t think my contributions were ever properly appreciated by the people making higher up decisions. I don’t even know who those people were, I just know they weren’t the people I directly worked with, because those who did work with me were always impressed by my work.³

It Was Probably Time Anyway

If I’m thinking objectively, I agree with the decision to lay me off, as much as it pains me. For the last year, I kept getting shuffled onto new teams, far away from my original campaign team obligations. I had no business being on the team I was on at the end. My position is technically a digital campaigns lead, yet I’m working in analytics and technology? I love data and analytics as much as the next guy, but I was a glorified secretary for a data team the last six months.

My long-time manager was trying to train me in business intelligence and data, while giving me more experience in project management,⁴ but on paper it seemed more like a make-work job. So I’m not surprised (or rather, I shouldn’t be as surprised as I originally was) that I was laid off.

I remember telling my boss about six months ago that, given all that was going on at the workplace, if there weren’t big things going on in my personal life (getting married, moving across the country, my wife needing health insurance), I would be looking for another job. That was a good instinct! But it was impractical at the time. What do I tell a Denver recruiter? That I’ll be there in six months? And many DC jobs are going away from full remote.

If I could have clung to this job for a little longer, that would have been great, as I already worked remotely and enjoyed great work-life balance. But it wasn’t meant to be.

What Next?

I hate to be toxically positive, but I think this will be for the best in the long term. I have been unchallenged by my job for at least a year now, and part of the reason I was shuffled to new teams is because my boss and I agreed that my talents were best fit for project management-style work, as that’s basically what I was doing for my campaign work.

This pivot is complicated now because most of the stuff I did at my last job worth mentioning on a resume was campaign-focused. So, I’m looking for Marketing Project Management Jobs (very niche!) with the hopes of pivoting away from communications/marketing in the next 5 years into full-on project management. The best news in all of this is that I’m likely done with advocacy. Seven years was enough.

As for substack…I’m still here! I can’t really give you a posting schedule or set expectations about what my writing will be like in 2026 when I inevitably(!) get a new job. There are many posts I want to write, from moral psychology, to ongoing Hume studies, to responding to Alex O’Conner videos, and so on.

I have set up paid subscriptions, but I am not committing to writing or producing any paid content until I get a job. If you want to become a paid subscriber, feel free, but know you won’t get anything out of it for at least a few months. I was hoping to start podcasting at the end of Q1 of this year, but that’s just not happening.⁵ Podcasting equipment is much cheaper than it was five years ago, but it’s still not a justified expense until I get a job. It would be irresponsible for me to commit to these things over applying for jobs or otherwise working toward getting a job (learning new skills, networking, finding a part time job).

For the foreseeable future, I’m going to be maxing out on job applications.

On my last job hunt I probably submitted 150 applications over the course of about 3 months (late January to mid April 2021). This got me about 18 phone interviews, a dozen job first round interviews, and about 5 more positions going further, including one offer while I was in the process of two more jobs. This time around, I’m about two weeks into this job hunt, and I’ve submitted over 70 applications, already landing about 4 phone interviews (though 2 of them I’m uninterested in).

My first ever job hunt took ten months, while my last one took three. At this rate, assuming the same success rates as before, it’ll take less time. That’s because I’m a better candidate (5 more years of experience will do that) and I have a more refined process of application (AI tools help). My hit rate on the jobs I apply for should be higher (knock on wood), as should the pace I apply for jobs.

We hope for exponential decay.

How Am I Holding Up?

I don’t want to overshare the details, but my family needs me to work. Unlike my previous stints of unemployment, failing to secure a job impacts more people than just myself. If you have ever had a family to support, that lights a fire within you that’s hard to explain to someone you haven’t.

For now, I’m not worried about putting food on the table or a roof over my head (though it’s really annoying that I can’t collect unemployment insurance as my employment ends before I move to another state). I’m getting some severance and thankfully signed a lease with a deal that gave me 2 months free rent, and when that rent starts it will be much cheaper than DC. I’ll have access to a car. Right now I have enough liquid funds to figure things out. In the worst case scenario, I could dip into retirement and last well into next year (I don’t think that will be necessary).

The challenge is really just managing my anxiety. Not that my anxiety is exceptionally bad, but it’s naturally a little unsettling to not know what life will look like in 8 months, from finances to debt, etc. There’s a range of possibilities that could happen. If I find a job fast, I could come out ahead financially. If unemployment lasts for longer than six months or so, we’re looking at a really bad situation.

All to say, I have created enough good fortune for myself (you may call it luck), and I know I’m a good enough worker, so I’ll find something. I suspect the optimistic scenario (where I come out slightly ahead) is actually more likely than the pessimistic one (finding nothing for over a year). The most likely scenario is going to be somewhere in between, closer to the optimistic case. I won’t know until I live it.

Closing With Epicurus

But hey! This is a philosophy substack, where’s the philosophy? I’m thinking through the lens of one of my favorite philosophers, Epicurus, and his tetrapharmakos (four-fold remedy):

1. Don’t Fear God

2. Don’t Worry About Death

3. What’s Good is Easy To Get

4. What’s Terrible is Easy To Endure

I’ve written about Epicurus before, as he’s one of my favorite philosophers.

The Epicurean Case For Behaving Well

The Epicurean Theory of Desire

The Prudential Hedonism of Epicureanism

For our purposes, I only care about 2-4. I’ll briefly summarize some connecting themes between them. Namely:

1. It’s not wise to be fearful or anxious about things that haven’t happened yet, or that you are not going to actually suffer from, like death. (Number 2)

2. There are many different kinds of pleasure. Our inability to be happy or find pleasure is often a result of chasing the wrong kinds of pleasure, those pleasures that are by nature difficult to obtain or that cause us pain after enjoying them. (Number 3)

3. Our bodies and brains have an upper limit for the amount of pain we can endure continuously. Truly terrible things will either kill you or cause you to pass out, immediately making them less terrible because you’re not conscious to experience them. (Number 4)

“Don’t Worry About…”

Living through this anxious time of life, I must prepare for the worst, but it’s absolutely silly to dwell on the worst case scenario as if it’s the most likely scenario or even a likely scenario.

Indeed, barring tragedy, the worst possible scenario would play out in mid-2027. A lot changes in 18 months, and it would be silly to think I couldn’t find some kind of employment by then. The fact that I have over a year before things get really bad means I have a lot of time. And even if I didn’t, I still have an extended family I could lean on for more support.

Every second I succumb to the anguish or anxiety of the worst case scenario is a second of time I’m wasting my life. It’s a second I could use to either improve my situation or merely enjoy the goods of my life (my health, my family, a good meal, a good TV show). That moment of the worst case scenario has not come yet and it may not come at all (dare I say it likely won’t?), so why ruin the current moment or (not) work to make it more probable?

Epicurus understood this about fearing death. Death is a silly thing to be afraid of because, from your subjective perspective, you’re never dead! If all you have is subjective experience, and that experience will one day end, it’s silly to diminish the quality of your experience by worrying about the badness of the end of that experience.

I think the same is true of all life’s worst case scenarios. Many of them will come to pass, outside of our control. But many of the situations we lose the most sleep about are (somewhat) within our control. The key is not to give into anguish but to do something about it, even if “doing something” is merely not thinking about it. The badness of inevitable things are amplified by compulsively thinking about them, so there’s no fault in actively trying to not think about them.

“What’s Good Is Easy To Get”

I will have to curtail some of my spending on things I enjoy until I find a new job, like eating out or getting drinks (honestly, my biggest financial vice). That’s not great, but there will still be many things available to me that I can enjoy for free. Indeed, I may enjoy some unanticipated pleasure by not indulging the more costly ones.

Maybe I’ll play more guitar and get better at it. Maybe I’ll run more. Maybe I’ll write more. Maybe I’ll have better spending habits afterwards. Who knows.

“What’s Terrible Is Easy To Endure”

The restrictions and the low-level anguish and anxiety sucks. But it’s not killing me. I am still here. There is nothing about me that is changing other than the nature of external stimulus signaling to my brain that my financial future and job security is, with high confidence, good. Obviously, those stimuli are different now and my body is reacting accordingly, but how I frame that reaction is within my control, and using philosophy is an excellent tool.

If the worst case scenario were to happen, I would be sad, but I would still have my health, my talents, my interests, and I would know things about myself that would help me endure future hardships. That is all the more reason to not react negatively. I would lose things, yes, but I will still have many good things available to me.

Sure, there are even worse scenarios that could happen, but their probability was not reliant on my employment. It would be unreasonable to think them more probable now, to think about them more, or to factor in their probability with planning my life. I wasn’t doing that 3 weeks ago, why would I now?

Putting It All In Perspective

In all, people say that philosophy, especially secular philosophy, is inferior to religion at granting assurance to the anxious. They’re wrong because they haven’t read Epicurus, and they don’t have a good sense of probability and human psychology. Our brains have a tendency to adjust to new normals; our happiness and personality often remains relatively stable throughout life. Change happens, and we inevitably adapt to it. Epicurus’s tetrapharmakos is an excellent way of understanding this.

I keep coming back to the idea that death is more probable than most of the things we worry about in life. Death is a certainty, while most other misfortunes we worry about are not. It’s a little odd that those things worry us more than death on any given day.

And so, it’s my approach to treat these forecasted hardships as less probable than death. It’s technically true!

The remedy for both kinds of hardships is to not think about the suffering, but to take as much into your control, to put off that that suffering for later. For death, that means eating relatively healthy and getting exercise and taking yourself out of risky situations. For perennial unemployment, that means applying for jobs, building skills, and networking.

What you’ll come to notice is that your ability to enjoy life is completely separate from these efforts. The answer to the question of “how do I have a good day today” is mostly unrelated to “how do I put off death or not think about death.”

I don’t read books or write substacks to prolong my life, but because I enjoy doing those things. Obviously, prolonged unemployment would prevent me from doing those things, as would death, but the day is 24 hours long, and I have plenty of time to do all of the above.

None of this is to say we shouldn’t appreciate the weight, finality or badness of dying or other hardships. Rather, the seriousness of those things should frame our sense of gratitude. Death and other problems have always lingered over our psychological lives, it’s only when those lives are seriously disrupted by tragedy that the reminders of death seep in.

But when we properly understand that death is probably both the worst thing that can happen to us and the most likely thing, it’s hard to feel justified in the anxiety of other bad things, that are not as bad and not as certain. If anything, we should feel empowered to solve or at least avoid those bad things because we have a degree of power to do so, at least relative to death.

At this point, I’ve probably blended some stoicism and existentialism in with my epicureanism, and that’s fine. What’s important is that we all have the means within us to be happy, to not be anxious, and to solve our most pressing problems.⁶

For those of you going through a rough and anxious time, I hope this post helped you. I understand that anxiety often creeps in, even when the best philosophy informs us it’s irrational (it happens to me all the time). Such is the way of the human brain. But if you keep going, you’ll find it will eventually recede. At the very least, you’ll find pockets of happiness in your day, when you otherwise.

Just remember: Don’t worry about death, what’s good is easy to get, and what’s terrible is easy to endure. You’ve got this!

1. That’s my philosophy of working on a team: Do your work well, and do it as soon as possible, to afford the team as much flexibility as possible.

2. I also have a little letter from my workplace saying I was in great standing for what it’s worth.

3. I’m not going to go into the details, but I think an objective assessment of my skills and how I contributed to the organization would show I probably deserved some kind of title change or promotion in the last five years, likely in the last 18 months. There were some jobs within the organization I applied for and others I believe I should have been asked to apply for. But a change never happened, and I had the same job in February 2026 as I was hired for in May 2021.

4. I’d say my first four years were project management for email campaigns, but it helps to make that work explicit on a resume

5. I’m not going to e-beg you for money right now. That would look pathetic because 1) I don’t yet need it and 2) I only have like 270 followers and so in the most optimistic scenario that would net me 27 paid subs or so, or a little more than $100. That’s not nothing, but I’m not that desperate yet.

6. There are some exceptions and difficulties not captured by epicureanism: some people experience chronic pain that’s unbearable, and some people suffer from anxiety disorders where they can’t just not think about something. I don’t want to be insensitive to people suffering in such ways, but I will say that they’re capable of happiness and stillness, just like the rest of us. They just have to take a different path.