How losing my job became the best thing that happened to me

The day I was let go I drove to a parking lot, sat in the car, and tried to remember what I liked. Not what I was good at. What I actually liked. It took me forty minutes to come up with three things.

Severance bought me ninety days. I used them badly at first — applying to versions of the same job, trying to land before the runway ran out. A friend asked what I would do if money weren't the question. I gave a corporate answer. She waited.

The honest answer was: I would help small organizations do hard things. So I started, for free, with two of them. Within a year that was the job.

Losing the title was the first time in twenty years anyone gave me permission to ask what the work was for.