AOL laid off over 2,000 employees worldwide today, including 750 at its Dulles campus. Some of those people are my friends and former coworkers, and my heart goes out to all of them — even the bitches. My former boss, who I like and respect immensely (although I am not sure the feeling is mutual) felt the axe today. He’s been there ten years.

Predictably, ValleyWag is having a field day with this, and Bobzmudaguy’s got another round of t-shirt designs out. Some of those are pretty funny, too … especially this one of Dick and Mary Cheney. Mary Cheney works at AOL. Nobody really knows what she does officially, apart from enrage her gay coworkers by simply existing.

The rage, bitterness, and sadness in the comments on this and this are alternately funny and heartbreaking. Funny in a “laugh when you’re stuck on a burning sinking ship” way, and heartbreaking because that’s real pain.

I know this, because it happened to me and 499 others last year.

Rumors of massive layoffs the next day had been flying around for months. I spent the night before wide awake, exhausting myself in the consoling embrace of my girlfriend, lurching into that 9 am meeting on three hours’ sleep. I was completely numb in the meeting, and didn’t hear a word of anything until they mentioned the severance package. Once it sunk in, I started cackling maniacally.

I remember packing up with music cranked, writing a farewell e-mail that reeked of schadenfreude (for everyone still there) and being walked out of the office. Not everyone took it as well on the surface as I did. We walked past an impressive spatter of vomit on the patio outside my office, on the way to the car.

We listened to “Heartbeats” by The Knife in the car on the way home, over and over again, and I felt completely free. I got home, got drunk alone, and planned a party. Then I wrote this blog post I really regret, likening corporate writing to drowning kittens in a river full of cash. It was about all the stress and fear I’d been feeling up to that moment, and how glad I was to be gone.

I was going to pursue my real dreams, the life I should have had, one of adventure and true artistic fulfillment, and my job wasn’t going to hold me back any longer, and apparently I wanted to tell the whole Internet. Valleywag picked it up, and pretty much everyone in the country that thinks they can define the phrase “Web 2.0″ read it, including a lot of people who had been very patient and kind to me at AOL.

It was not one of my better decisions.

After the hangover cleared, I flew to L.A. with a writing partner and pitched a Web TV show that got shot down in about ten minutes. Then I sat in my apartment in my underpants for seriously about three months just dicking around with Digg. I had all the freedom I’d ever wanted and a severance package to enjoy it, and I was completely paralyzed. Imagine having life jump in your lap, naked and smiling and saying “Come on, pilgrim, I’ll follow your lead!” It was terrifying.

All that adventure, all that living, all that stuff that could be done without being stuck behind a computer — it was all out there, passing me by and I had no idea how to go out and grab it. It took months for me to realize how deeply I had identified with my job at AOL, and how fulfilling it really was, and how much it hurt to have it gone. That bleating, the trumpeting, the blogging … it was shock and grief and I was too proud to admit it.

Now I’m in New York. I’ve got a decent job with decent people. I’m still drowning kittens in a river full of cash, but I’m doing it with a smile on my face now. Last year’s me would look at this year’s model and think that something in me had died. Maybe it has — but it was smothered under a pillow by a me that’s grown up a little.

I’m working on a few dream stories right now and pitching them to publications I’ve always wanted to write for. But it took a long time and a lot of strange heartbreak, and while I like my life a lot now, I don’t wish the process on anyone. Getting laid off kicks your life right in the kidneys, even if you do get an awesome severance package. Your identity, your pride, your whole work ethic are just stripped from you like a piece of velcro, and it takes a long, long time to recover.

I just found out that a LOT of my favorite folks from AOL got let go. And I am so, so sorry to hear it. I knew a lot of caring, talented, and reliable people there, and many of them are now looking for work.

I’m not a business analyst, but I do know this: it’s really hard to work hard when you think you’re going to get laid off. You don’t want all that passion to go down the drain, and it’s human nature to hunker down and avoid getting noticed until the storms clear. I would imagine that at a very high level, AOL has given up on its hope of innovating anything new or reclaiming the buzz it once had. It’s not going to get the trust and passion out of its employees it takes to really innovate for a very long time.

Best of luck to all of you that got handed your freedom today. In some ways, you’re better off. In other ways, you’re not. I just hope you can navigate the next year or so as well as possible … or at least better than I did. If you find yourselves in New York — whether or not we’ve actually met — the first round’s on me.

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