You got laid off. You waited for the breakdown. It didn’t come.

Now what?

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Downshifting is for men in their early fifties who built everything they were supposed to build — and then one Wednesday morning had it handed back in a severance package, and realized, quietly, that they weren’t as devastated as expected.

This is Mike’s story. VP for eleven years. Then not. He waited to fall apart the way his friend Dennis did — the midnight calls, the regrettable LinkedIn messages, the truly unreasonable quantity of buffalo wings. It didn’t happen. What happened instead was a legal pad with two columns that changed everything.

Left column: things I still actually want.

Right column: things I assumed I wanted because I forgot to check if the program was still running.

The right column filled up faster than expected.