Whoo hoo! Wednesdays

"Whoohoo!" usually is not your first thought when you are laid off.

But eight weeks ago, when I joined that quickening procession of cast-off journalists headed for the unemployment rolls, I found it on my lips anyway.

As in, "Whoohoo, this is exciting!"

By rights, I shouldn't be feeling that kind of optimism. I am a mere statistic in the wave of layoffs rippling through American newspapers with dispiriting frequency. I should wallowing in self-pity. But this is more interesting.

Some background: I am a veteran journalist with 25 years of experience, both East Coast and West Coast, as reporter, assigning editor and columnist. The latest stint was at the San Jose Mercury News, which had its third round of layoffs in 15 months on March 7. I am, in short, your basic Journosaurus - middle-aged, techno-functional but not techno-fluent, and equipped, quaintly, with a passionate belief in the craft and the calling. The world is not clamoring at my doorstep for my skills.

So what's with the "Whoohoo Wednesdays?"

I've embraced my status. It's a posture. And a choice I can make, with the economy and ad revenue out of my control. Reinvention on the fly -- with mouths to feed, mortgages to make, or both -- is panic-inducing. Opening your eyes to the possibilities, despite all that, is the opposite. So why not anticipate some fun?

It took a couple of weeks to get there, mind you. A serendipitously planned trip to Hawaii with my husband and 91-year-old father -- four days after turning in my security badge -- some beach time, and a few umbrella drinks helped the mood transition. Not everyone who is laid off has that luxury.

The genesis, however, was right outside our newspaper building on the day we were laid off. Some of us lingered by the parking lot after our exit interviews, the big, tell-tale white envelopes containing the details of our severance folded protectively against our chests. I reminded a colleague how we had joked once that we could start a party-planning business for culturally impaired Asian-Americans who didn't want their aunties clucking in disapproval over a missed detail in protocol or inept menu selection. In truth, some of us were still in shock. And in some cases, tears, barely masked, were welling up beneath the bravado.

From that began "Whoohoo Wednesdays." Really, it's just another name for lunch.

"Would you like to join us for posh dim sum and housemade sodas?" my colleague, Carolyn, the food writer, e-mailed within the week. (We are in the foodie-friendly San Francisco Bay Area, after all.)

None of us -- feature writer, metro columnist, photographer and page designer -- knew each other well, but we had one big thing in common: free time, due to Reduction In Force.

Rejection, really, is how it feels. Good food is a good salve, however.

It was also a good start. We talked about how we had spent our time in the past week: the process of filing for unemployment benefits, tips for getting through to that office on the phone, our ideas for next steps. We exchanged how we learned we were on the layoff list. And we circled around our sense of failure, finally talking about it openly, the denouement to a year of foreboding and dread punctuated by news of buyouts and layoffs across the country. Self-blame, of course, raises its head whenever there are layoffs, even when rational minds know the impersonal and arbitrary nature of cuts needed to staunch the financial hemorrhaging.

We agreed to meet on another Wednesday. I left with a sense of optimism. Carolyn was launching a food blog called "Food Gal," which was being designed by Elizabeth. Joanne was at a convention in Las Vegas, where she was drumming up business for her wedding photography enterprise. Ideas were popping. Support was abundant, feedback honest.

My e-mail to the group that night made the name official, if not grammatical: "Whoohoo! Wednesdays are something to look forward to!"

My days quickly filled with coffees with other colleagues who had been laid off; associates and acquaintances in academia, business and non-profit organizations; and freelance writers. There were dinners, and drinks, on occasion. When people ask what I've been doing, I reply that I have become a Lady Who Lunches.

The lunches are not as posh as that first gathering because we are, after all, unemployed. And the news is unrelenting, the trends are daunting. The Audit Bureau of Circulations just reported sharp declines in the past six months, with the exception of the two largest national dailies. Advertising Age launched a series this week with the gloomy headline, "Newspaper Death Watch," to get your attention, lay out the problems and talk to those with strategies for new business models.

We practitioners suffer also from a spreading yet inchoate sadness. This thing we love, journalism, even when practiced to a professional standard, is not loved back. Not in sufficient numbers, nor in a structure that people would want to pay to support it.

Against this backdrop, yes, I'm looking for a job. There are other important matters to attend to: résumés to hone, Web sites to set up. The social need to connect -- to get and give ideas -- is also the place, I believe, from which the next fabulous career will begin for us.

What that is, given that newspapers resemble melting ice floes, is hard to say. Who knows how it's going to turn out? Read along -- you might as well get your vicarious thrills here. And if you have been laid off, perhaps we can mutually offer something worth gleaning.

In the weeks to come, I'll share what I learn from all comers: tips and thoughts from everyone from career counselors to the neighborhood bartender or CEO, observations from the bowels of the state employment office and the networking circuit.

I hope my betters may succeed in saving newspapers in some form, since I've got a craving I can't kick. In the meantime, I'm on my own. There are a lot of us out on the virtual streets, in competition with each other for work, and sometimes hanging onto each other for dear life.

Whoohoo, I'm free to explore.