Fri, Apr 3, 2020
Read in 2 minutes
Philadelphia Hub, USA. Originally from Saratoga Springs, NY
It’s really crazy when I sit back and think about it. Just 2 days ago I was having client conversations, meeting work deliverables and spending waking nights processing dataset updates, really overachieving and trying to surpass work goals.
Until I woke up yesterday morning and…
**BAM**
An email from my new boss asking me to call her first thing in the morning, and I knew it before the call, I lost my job because of the pandemic. It’s only natural in moments like this to feel angry, upset, spiteful, uncertain, and I know that I had every one of those emotions running through me. But I managed to connect with colleagues, hand over assignments and try to spend the day in as responsible of a manner as possible, because it’s not your colleagues fault that this happened, it’s just the bad luck of working in an industry that’s being crushed by this horrible point in history.
Here I am now, 24 hours since that phone call and realization. My first day without a job. I still woke up at my normal time, made my french-press of coffee and got ready for the day. But instead of opening my work laptop (which is very far hidden out of view), I spent the morning on a video call strategizing starting a company with my friends from Europe. The creativity, passion and teamwork was something that I haven’t felt from my work in a while.
After that, I wrote down all of the tasks that I needed to get done for the day. The list was scattered with jobs to apply to, working on fun projects, volunteering and grad school homework, basically all things that I want to be spending my days on. It’s definitely still very uncomfortable not having the security of a job, but there’s never been a better time in my life to try to become an entrepreneur.
Rather than feeling ‘unemployed’ I’m all of a sudden thrust back into my entrepreneurial spirit, while having the benefit of unemployment compensation. Don’t get me wrong, I really wish this didn’t occur, and I hope to get a new job very soon, but I think this is a great opportunity for the world to reimagine, design and bring the change that’s needed to solve some of our biggest challenges.