How To Establish Personal Sovereignty

The painful first step of a long journey - getting laid off

Comrades: I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that this Substack is now my only form of income. Shortly after returning to work from a brief paternity leave, I was blindsided and laid off. Like many other companies, a significant percentage of my comrades were also purged. It’s a brutal reminder that you can never be fully free and sovereign if you are dependent on a paycheck from someone else.

Here are 4 practical things you need to do ASAP:

• Save your most important employment documents, performance reviews, and hard evidence of your accomplishments in a personal cloud and portable hard drive because when the time comes, you will lose access to company systems instantly - IT is slow on everything else except hitting the kill switch

• Make sure you have several trusted friends in your industry who can help you navigate the separation process and figure out what to do next

• Add a good employment lawyer to your rolodex

• Build side income streams

On that last point, I would greatly appreciate it if you considered becoming a paid subscriber during this uncertain period. Alternatively, please share any of the ~40 posts you liked with others. All you have to say is “I found an interesting Substack by a comrade named Yuri Bezmenov who will make you think and laugh with his pattern recognition and memes.” I am grateful for all your support thus far; it has been a treat to share my random musings with this fun and growing audience.

As it pertains to my own situation, I am still absorbing the shock and evaluating options. A lawyer friend believes I have a case to negotiate more severance with an implied threat of litigation, given how soon I was terminated after returning from paternity leave. I have never been involved in a lawsuit before and hope it doesn’t come to that, though I suppose you’re not a real American until you enter the judicial system. I welcome any counsel here.

Based on the intel I’ve gathered, the factors behind the layoffs are all too common in corporate America:

• The company may not be performing as well as employees were led to believe; we were told by our HR executioners over Zoom that it was not related to personal performance.

• Several colleagues who also had recently returned from parental leaves were also laid off; they were well respected highly competent team players, while many less respected incompetent selfish people still have their jobs.

• Our direct reports were spared. We had trained them up to the point where they could handle most things while we were on leave. Management made the cold calculation to keep them at a fraction of the cost of those who trained them, then axed us.

• I was pleasantly surprised by the Zoomers we mentored. They scaled the learning curve quickly and worked hard. I wish them all the best. They will have to mature quickly in order to make it off the beach after the Waffen WEF decimated the first wave of millennials ahead of them.

• My boss was the best manager I ever worked for and I learned a lot from him. Third parties have verified that he was not informed of the decision until the day before and was unable to overrule the executive team. In retrospect, I may have missed a few warning signs. He postponed a business trip due to budget tightening, expressed insecurity that I had stronger relationships with our clients than he did, and was reluctant to discuss another promotion that would move me up closer to his position.

• I had to work from home more often than the company wanted due to my wife’s difficult pregnancy and our new baby

• I pushed back against the company’s booster mandate

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - being a “white adjacent” male means your intersectionality score is low, and you only get the downsides of being the oppressor or the oppressed in clown world

You learn a lot about people during adversity. I always make it a point to wish departing colleagues well because it’s a small world and we will cross paths again. Now I know who has class and who doesn’t, and will treat them accordingly. Most companies are awful at managing graceful and dignified employee exits. Just like Stalin’s infamous censored photo, we were immediately removed from the company website as if we were never there.

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The good news is the same as the bad news - this Substack is now my only form of income. What that means for you, dear reader, is even higher quality and quantity of content. I am philosophically against paywalls, so I humbly ask again that you consider becoming a paid subscriber. This will also help Substack stay afloat and they deserve our respect for defending free speech.

Feel free to email or comment anytime with suggestions for posts. As you can see, I cover a wide range of topics. This summer, I will be focusing on more pragmatic and uplifting topics like personal sovereignty, recipes, and travel recommendations. The silver lining for me is that I can to spend more time with Baby Yulia and help Mrs. Bezmenov recover. We are looking forward to quality family time, an extended paternity leave if you if you will. It’s nice to have an open calendar with no Zoom for the first time in a while.

As a society, we appear to be going through biblical times both spiritually and economically. I pray that all of you will be able to weather the storm. Yuri will be here for you and pull no punches on the demonic forces around us. The cycle shall continue, but God always wins in the end.

I will leave you with 2 ideas and 2 poems that have stuck with me over the years. May they inspire us to build resilience and courage.

Idea 1: Content is infinitely scalable

Idea 2: Burn the ships - your safety net must be destroyed in order for you to fully grow, explore, and take risks

Poem 1: Rudyard Kipling’s If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Poem 2: Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis

These are the times that try men’s souls:
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country;
but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;
yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:
Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods;
and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated…

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.