NOt (NOT) FIRED
hi friend,
It's the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm up early, sitting on the bathroom floor of my dad's guest room.
If you're like me, the last two weeks have been a motherf*cker.
I got fired by my biggest client after asking her not to curse at me.
I got a letter from my mother, whom I have had no contact with for the better part of a year.
I thought I was going to break up with my partner, who I plan on spending the rest of my life with, and that was honestly just the half of it.
And I know I’m not the only one whose life went full demolition derby just in time for the holidays 🦃🎄🥂.
HOW THEY TREAT SOME PEOPLE
IS HOW THEY TREAT ALL PEOPLE
If you follow me on Instagram, you saw me record the lesson I learned from getting fired by this woman in my Notion under my Rules.
Never again will I ignore red flags for a consistent paycheck, but tbd.
The irony is, I already have a rule that says, “All money is not good money,” but the thing is, rules are only rules if you follow them, and my Notion Virtual Office is only as good as I apply it.
And God will give you a lesson again and again until you get it.
I was going to write, “Never meet the Wizard,” as my new rule, but I am honestly so grateful to have peeked behind the curtain of someone I considered a mentor that it's not the real lesson for me.
I got to find out first-hand that being #delulu doesn't work in a fun meme kind of way, but like a Donald Trump, “Never admit defeat,” sort of way.
It requires her personal ability to make facts irrelevant.
So, as someone obsessed with finding the capital “t” Truth (especially when it comes to seeing how I could have behaved better), the delulu thing is never going to work for me.
Self-acceptance looks like leaning into my radical honesty and having a system to turn into applied lessons learned instead of rumination.
Maybe you do this too?
Take the same L over and over because you never stop long enough to figure out what the actual lesson was?
You learn the lesson but have nowhere to put it, so three months later, you're back making the same mistake with a different person?
That's what this whole thing is about. THE OFFICE (coming this January) is a Notion life operating system I built to stop the cycle.
It's where my Values become Rules, my Rules inform my Goals, and my Goals turn into actual Projects I can track without losing my mind when life goes sideways.
ORGANIZATION FOR THE DISORGANIZED
My dirty little secret is that I am not an organized person.
I would lose my head if it were not attached (as my dad says).
But the benefit of being raised by a mother who would dump all my clothes into the center of the room if one of my shirts were not folded 'correctly' — I was forced to learn to be organized to feel loved.
Was it healthy? No.
But I would be lying if I had not benefited from it, rising to the occasion of an unreasonable standard. And now you get to benefit from it too!
Just like in my last newsletter, where I talked about how the sidewalk dips help more than just the folks in wheelchairs, you might not suffer from the NEED of a Virtual Office --- I can guarantee that you will benefit from one.
But more importantly, be able to reset, reorganize, and restart when the plan inevitably does not go as planned.
A system built for perfect days will collapse the second life sneezes; a system built for setbacks will hold you when you fall apart.
It's like — How many times are you going to rebuild your house after an earthquake without building some flexibility into it so that it can withstand the next one?
DESIGN FOR INEVITABLE SETBACKS
In the next few weeks, you will be inundated with the 'New Year. New Me.' productivity bros that tell you discipline is the key to success.
I say, f*ck that. We don't do that shit over here.
As a recovering workaholic, I promise you that burnout is on the other side of unrelenting brute force.
A good system allows me to take rest when I need it and regroup quickly after the 10th time Netflix asks me, “Are you still there?” and I respond with, “What the fuck am I doing with my life?”
So excuse me while I do a little bedrotting today and finish the Blue-Eye Samurai on my dad's flat screen while eating leftovers, but then…
Here's what I'm doing
This Monday on the Not Not Podcast, I'm walking you through exactly how I reset my entire life using Notion after getting fired.
Then I'm opening up THE OFFICE for you to grab just in time for the New Year so you can start 2026 with a system that actually works for how you work, not against it.
Click here to get notified when doors open
If you're into that, stick around, and if not, do yourself a favor and hit that unsubscribe button at the bottom of the newsletter.
It's about to get real Notion-y up in this b*tch.
"Guess who’s got two thumbs, speaks limited French, and hasn’t cried once today? This moi," 👍 Daryl
