Last month I got laid off from my anchor gig. I was leading strategy for an open source civic tech agency. I’ve always worked several jobs in parallel, so “laid off” doesn’t mean I totally stopped working, but it does mean the thing that paid 75% of my income that I showed up for four days a week, is gone.

So I’m doing my own career refresh. But before I go looking for the next anchor, I’m taking a ~millennial pause~ a/k/a a break in which I will actually take time to rest, reflect, try things, and improve my discernment about what I want to do, today.

Here’s why: today’s job market means finding the next anchor gig could take a while no matter what I do. So instead of scrambling into the first thing, I want to be intentional about what I do next and actually ready and excited to do it, not just relieved to have landed somewhere. That means resting my brain, exploring parallel paths, and looking for jobs in unusual places.

The little nervous voice

I’ll be honest with you: I’m in a healing moment around burnout AND people pleasing [thankfully I’ve tamed the perfectionism and scarcity lol]. In me, burnout feels like a little voice that says this doesn’t need to be done, it’s not a priority about everything, even things I actually care about.

Which feels bad for a person who generally LIKES to accomplish things!

I’ve been wrestling with some fundamentals:

• Do I want to do more of what I was doing?
• What would I change, if so?
• What else might I do, if not?
• And what am I going to do about how tired I got trying to do so much work?

What I’ve noticed, taking a low-key summer after a layoff

On healing burnout:

Here’s a hypothesis I’ve landed on, based on years of booking queer performance art tours: the root of burnout might not only be overdoing it. It might be overindexing on things that don’t feed me. Not just doing “too much,” but too much of the wrong thing.

Today’s ways of working are highly correlated with burnout, but not everyone gets burnt out – when I was booking tours it took SEVEN YEARS before I truly burned out, because I was so freaking into what I was doing!

I think the difference has a lot to do with what you’re overdoing, not just how much of it. I know I need to do more of the right things, and what I was up to was not *quite* hitting the mark for me.

The hype is true: resting really does restore your brain. (Also I started HRT this summer, so there’s a random variable in the mix.) I started July wanting to throw my computer out a window. By late August I am genuinely excited to try out some of the ideas that had emerged on their own, unforced.

I’ve taken a lot of trips, and every one of them has been magical in its own way, and reminded me the world is a lot bigger than my office, my existing ideas, and my habits.

Adding positive chaos has been great! It looked like: random walking tours, going to new places in my neighborhood, lots of friend and sweetheart time, and seeking out nature I hadn’t experienced before.

On exploring work:

• A lot of the traction I’m getting for contract work is from people I’ve met along the way or already know – telling people I know that I’m on a job/contract search has already yielded leads 
• Two RFPs and projects have come my way unprompted, based on work I did over the last few years, making me feel both a little woo about patience and proud that I’ve been doing my thing loudly enough to be noticed
• The one job I applied for cold that got back to me asked for a one-way interview: the kind where an app prompts you to answer questions on video, alone. It was a crappy experience.
• The interviews I’m getting are for work that closely mirrors roles I’ve had before. My hypothesis is that no one has to guess whether I’ll be good at it.
• There are places hiring out there, and a lot of them in my fields/roles of interest want experience implementing AI workflows (eg building and using skills and agents) and governing AI use. That’s been food for thought as I keep testing both deterministic and generative AI tooling myself, considering ethics, and my own upskilling.
• Interviewing, writing resumes, and updating professional websites is its own skill set separate from doing whatever job you’re trying to get. I’m good at all these and still find they require focus and work!

What I’ve learned:

• I don’t have to be in hype mode
• Having a “take a break fund” saved has given me so much grounding and calm through all of this.
• There are solid ideas in my brain if I give it rest and other stimulating inputs
• Generating solid ideas is not a reason to rest; experiencing life is the reason
• I can assess a job and say no to it based on organization red flags, even if I “know how to do it”
• Nature offers incredible perspective from the grind
• Relationships are everything

Widening the scope

Overall, I committed to NOT going gung ho on any plans until September, which absolutely felt like edge play to me, a type A planner and strategy head. But this was intentional squishiness, knowing I needed to add new ideas and I needed them to drop in to me from the outside. 

A few weeks ago, I started the part of this career transition where I intentionally widened what I’m open to. Here are my guidelines for that:

• Feed my mind and explore the deferred: read the saved tabs, take in the whole article, watch the documentary.
• Talk to new people about ideas, about helping them, about creating opportunity.
• Surface criteria: keep noticing what works for me, what I’m drawn to, and what’s happening in fields I haven’t been immersed in.
• Write, and share it.

Meanwhile, I also took August to:

• Sweeping the corners: finishing the stuff that piled up while I was working: updating websites, exporting videos, a book proposal.
• Committing to reflection: what did I learn, what am I leaving behind, what am I leaning into.
• Submitting applications: even though I know most jobs come through a personal connection and not a cold application, I’m still applying, to keep the energy going.

Eventually I’ll test out about three wildcard concepts of content ideas or work directions I might not otherwise explore. September’s upcoming experiments towards this are: 

• adding more professional positive chaos (a certificate class at Harvard, coaching meetups, a coworking space)
• working up a new business offer idea, without grinding, and validating it’s desirability and viability as I go [ more on how to do that in a later post]  
• creative side quests: Season 2 of the Have a Nice Life podcast is in production, plus there’s another creative idea I want to play with.

If you’re in a career pause of your own, whether forced or chosen, I hope this is a salve.

Rest helps. Widening the scope inspires. And you don’t have to be in hype mode to get where you’re going.

For more, follow along with my , or get more on career change from Have a Nice Life, the podcast I cohost with Pippi Kessler, in particular, the 2025 episodes on: 

Episode 16: Tools for Generating and Expanding Your Career Ideas

Episode 17: How to do Experiments to Figure Out a Career Change