On Jan. 29, 2021, I joined the 25 million people and counting who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s been an unforgiving time for all of us in many different ways. I loved having a job to keep me busy, but I knew it was coming to an end.

I’m the kind of person who throws myself into my work. I disappear in my projects. I dissipate in the planning. I drown in my diligence. I fade into the feat. I get lost in the long hours. I get taken up in the tasks. I vanish in the ventures. Until I am no more but my job title. 

I’ve always had a full-time job ever since I’ve been an adult. Then I was a full-time student for over six years, which is a job you don’t get paid to do, and it never ends, not even on the weekends or the late late hours. 

After I graduated college in the spring of 2018 from San Francisco State University, I was finally able to get jobs in my study field. With a shiny, new degree in hand, I was proud to fill writing and editing positions that I wouldn’t have attained without my education. I felt important.

Now, after a year and a half at my last position, I knew it was my time to go. 

It’s been a sobering time. For those of us laid-off, we’ve been experiencing this feeling of freedom like never before. Initially, I became lonely and unproductive. I felt off-course and irrelevant. No one to count on me to deliver presentations in meetings anymore, only my senior dog for me to deliver his food and medications. 

We all have been forced to look in the mirror. See our reflection for what it is. No job to hide behind. No routine that sweeps you out of bed and sits you at your desk. Your calendar is bare and now so are you.

Who are you really? What do you want? What brings you joy?

Questions I haven’t asked myself in what seems like eons. 

I don’t have all the answers yet, but I’m having quite the enchanting quest.

Pace yourself. Take pleasure in the unknown and the unmapped journey ahead.

SSxx