On February 1, I woke up to an unexpected email from my employer.
I laughed out loud at first, then smiled and felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. I went through a wide range of emotions that morning, but despair was never one of them. As a high performer on my team, I did not expect to be laid off. However, looking back over the last several months, there were a few indicators that it might happen.
I quickly realized the bright side of my situation:
- It was the middle of ski season, and
- I had nothing to do.
I was laid off on a Thursday morning and was scheduled to leave for Jfokus that Saturday. I was supposed to do a workshop, a talk, and help at the Okta booth. Since my talks used Okta products and it'd be weird to represent a company that just laid you off, I had to back out of the conference. It just didn't feel right.
The reason I had nothing to do is all of the activities I did on my computer were Okta-related. I didn't even have a personal computer. I did all my work on the company laptop and all of my open source contributions had a relationship to my work.
I received many inquiries from my tweet above and my LinkedIn post with the same message. I told everyone I was going to take a couple weeks to process things and skiing was my top priority. I've been unemployed in the past, but I never received any sort of severance, let alone one that lasted for months. I knew that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Funemployment is the condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life. This is my funemployment story.
First, I headed to Winter Park to stay at our Ski Chalet. There were several powder days and a few friends that joined in the festivities.
I returned home that Friday to attend a local Chi Phi Fraternity reunion in downtown Denver.
Then, Trish and I enjoyed a Pitbull concert at Ball Arena and I sent back my laptop and stickers.
My parents came to visit for 10 days in mid-February. We hung out with Abbie and Jack a few nights, including a night at Casa Bonita, the self-proclaimed "Greatest Restaurant in the World!"
I got a couple more powder days in at the end of February.
My sister proposed we go to Spring Training in Arizona and I leapt at the opportunity. I'd never been before and it seemed like fun. I highly recommend it if you've never been, especially the one in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are several baseball games every day, they're all within driving distance, and the weather is gorgeous.
Before flying home on March 5th, I made sure to announce my plans for the rest of the month. All these trips had been planned for months, except for Spring Training.
My friend Chris Morse's birthday at Sugarbush was outstanding. I expected a bit more snow, but we had fun anyway.
Then, I joined Trish in Naples, Florida for St. Paddy's Day with her family.
We teamed up with Bruce and Janene Snyder for Spring Break. They're empty nesters like us, our kids are both at CU, and shared the same Spring Break. When we originally planned our trip to Cabo San Lucas, we expected our kids might join us. We didn't mind going without them when they declined.
After a week in Cabo, we returned to Colorado and spent the weekend skiing at Winter Park and Steamboat.
You can find more photos on Flickr in my Funemployment 2024 album.
April arrived quickly and I aggressively started looking for my next gig. By aggressively, I mean I updated my resume and started applying to jobs the old-fashioned way. I haven't needed a resume since 2007. It's nostalgic to look back at the last one I used in 2007. For the last decade and a half, I've relied on my reputation and LinkedIn profile. You can find my current resume here.
Throughout April, I've been talking with several companies. I also attended Devnexus and did a road trip to speak at the Utah JUG. Both trips deserve their own blog posts, so watch for those soon. In the meantime, if you're hiring exceptional software engineers or developer advocates, I'd love to chat!
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