Member-only story
An Unemployment Adventure
I’m Just One Story of Many
At the height of the pandemic, we saw unemployment soar to 14.7% in April of 2020, with companies facing total uncertainty about what the future held.
I had moved to Baltimore City in the summer of 2019, uprooting my comfortable life in Pittsburgh of over two decades, arriving fresh-faced for a new job and to start a whole new life in a new city and state. I was ready for change. Buuuutttt… my company saw those same stresses, and I was part of a huge round of layoffs myself.
So much for positive change.
Not to worry. I got a comfortable severance package, and I enjoyed some time regrouping by volunteering, exploring other opportunities and meeting some really great people. It didn’t take me long to land another gig and settle in.
Here’s where things get rocky, and a little messy. Hold on tight. I wasn’t going to share this journey, but here goes.
I joined a small firm as a proposal writer. I’m not super-comfortable in that role, but I’m good at it. I continued to be good at it, but it’s not work I particularly enjoy, so when a colleague I’d met working at the first job I had here in Baltimore called and told me he wanted to recruit me — really, really wanted to recruit me — to join him at a fast-growing cybersecurity startup he was with, I…
