One effect of losing your day job is that you begin to reflect on past work experiences. At least, that’s been an effect on me these last few months. A recent reflection took me back to one of my earliest jobs. During my high school and college years, I worked as a summer camp lifeguard. […]
Let’s talk portfolios. I spent the better part of yesterday cobbling together a writing portfolio. I was prompted to do so by a job that I wanted to apply to — the first one I really liked that required such a thing. Work Product and Attribution The reason it took me so long to put
I took the weekend off from being unemployed. Rather, let’s call it a couple half days. A little over week ago, I posted a list of things I was going to do every day to have a successful, sustainable, and hopefully short unemployment transition. I’ve been doing pretty well, completing most things every day. Everyone
Hard to believe it’s been a week already. It’s funny how quickly we can settle into a “new normal,” even if we hope that it’s not normal for long. Moving On I moved a lot as I grew up. By the time I graduated high school, I lived in 9 cities in 3 states and
My LinkedIn impressions are up 40,000% in the last 7 days. I’m clearly amazing at engagement. Someone should hire me. Fun Numbers The reality behind the metric is that I rarely posted on LinkedIn before I was laid off last Friday. Since then, I’ve been posting daily. It doesn’t take much to increase 40,000% from
I got ghosted. 👻👻 No, this isn’t a post about my dating life (though it’s happened there, too). This is about someone who reached out to me the day I first posted that I had been laid off. SEO CEO According to his LinkedIn profile, the person who reached out was the CEO of an
Today’s the first day that my jobless status feels “real.” The weekend was a weekend—they weren’t days I would have worked anyway. Yesterday, Monday, I was able to dig in and check off items on my list of daily things to accomplish, making the day pass by fairly quickly. Today, however, it’s been harder to
An odd coincidence occurred to me this morning. About 24 years ago, in August 2000, I got my first “real” job in at FleetBoston1 Financial in Waltham, Massachusetts. On August 2024, I lost my most recent job. Although my logical brain knows that coincidences like this don’t really mean anything, I’ve always been fascinated by
This past Tuesday I started reading “The Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius. (In English translation—it’s been a long time since I studied Latin.) In hindsight, that may have been a mistake. For those who haven’t read it, my very reductionist summary is this: Boethius, in exile and about to be executed, gaslights himself into believing
Yesterday, I was laid off after 10 years at the same company. This is my first official day of unemployment. I guess this post makes me “that guy” — i.e., the one who aspires to document the experience in some effort at exerting control, refining my thoughts and emotions, and picking a way forward. One
