#NewBeginnings

With the new year came new changes. Okta and I parted ways in December, and I’ve been taking the last couple of months to recharge and tackle a long backlog of tasks. For those that have the opportunity to take in the rarified air of #funemployment and #selfreflection, I highly recommend it.

I really started thinking about doing a #funemployment break last year as I talked with friends and colleagues who were affected by the tech layoffs of 2023/2024. A few of them took advantage of the opportunity that a work break afforded – an opportunity to pause, to recharge, and to think about what they wanted to do. I never took an extended break from work…and I found myself wanting one. Well, now I have it – and it has been fantastic.

In my 20+ years working, I have always been defined by my work – my role and my employer. I have never had a mentor or a coach, and I haven’t really participated in a community outside of my work. But I also haven’t had to – I’ve always worked for larger companies where your extended work colleagues could serve as proxy for community. By falling into the easy, I kept my professional network constrained and I cut corners around my personal life.

And work was really work – I was paid well, but I also earned every dollar that pay. I worked long hours at my home office, I traveled a lot over the last couple of years, I got up early for meetings with European colleagues and stayed on with SF-based colleagues…I stressed out about comms, about KPIs, about upcoming events, about budgets, about cross-org conflicts and how to bridge them, and about my extended team. In doing this, I poured a lot of myself into my work and my team. I learned a lot, I also gave up a lot. That ended with the end of 2024 – and, when I shared it with my family, they literally cheered.

My initial months #reconnection

For the first couple of months of 2025, I tackled what comes hardest to me – people connections. I am horrible at staying connected – I suck at it with friends, I suck at it with family, and I suck at it with prior colleagues.

Colleagues

I put up a posting on LinkedIn sharing the news and put out the offer to reconnect. Frankly, I was humbled by the interest to connect – I was amazed by how many people accepted my bid and raised it. And I took everyone up on their offer – I worked new muscles and worked through my social anxiety to connect.

It was all likely less awkward than it felt inside my skull, but I don’t know how people do this. In one case, I reconnected someone that I hadn’t worked with in 18 years. And I received some loving ribbings along the lines of ‘I saw this and took the rare offer’ or ‘wow – congrats on a new social muscle’ or the like.

And while I really enjoyed these reconnections, my next step is to figure out how to keep this up in a consistent fashion. At the moment, I’m playing with an Excel spreadsheet to help track when I last caught up with folks and to set/track a connection cadence…not to dehumanize it all, but to hold myself accountable to do this. I’ve already found myself retracting back into myself without the public accountability, and I need to actively counteract it.

By the numbers, my social reemergence looks like this:

• 2 monthly social group connections – I’m saying yes to these! 🙂
• 22 connections – real coffees, virtual beverages, and lunches

Personal life

I’ve also taken the time to reconnect outside of the work environment – truly recharging my depleted battery:

• It was fantastic to spend the holidays with my family and teaching my son to drive. ’nuff said.
• Scouts BSA Troops – I’ve taken being a merit badge counsellor and I’m volunteering as an adult leader. And I’ve volunteered to build out a DEI talk for my Troop’s PLC that I will also likely present at the Council level.
• D&D – I’ve also found a local group that meets weekly! It’s been great experience that forces me out of the house and gives me something to look forward to.
• Personal fitness – This is an area that I’ve only recently just started to focus on…particularly given I don’t have an excuse.

One thing that I’ve learned about myself is that I need accountability to get things done. And when that accountability is weighted towards work, my life follows. I’m using this opportunity to set a counter-balancing accountability before heading back in.

Taking back my content

On that note of accountability, I’m taking back my content and getting my blog moving again.

As I deleted my Twitter account, I mourned the photos, the posts, and all of the history that was being wiped away. I’ve decided to no longer send my content out to social media websites. And so, I set this site up and I’ve migrated a lot of old content into it. I’m done sharing content with social media that builds walls and holds me hostage to them. I commit to rebuilding my blogging muscle and posting here – without AI. 🙂

Starting this week, I start a #NewBeginning – sharing content and thoughts here on this site. Stay tuned.