Member-only story
I Knew 2020 Was Going to Be a Rough Year for My Career. I Had No Idea How Bad.
I applied for over 100 jobs and dealt with a surprise lawsuit while grappling with a pandemic
Just over a year ago, I was sequestered inside my apartment, barely leaving if I could help it. In late February 2020, the pandemic hadn’t yet become a terrifying reality in Brooklyn, where I live, but the thought of opening my front door filled me with an all-consuming, existential dread. I had already put myself into lockdown mode.
For a number of reasons (but many of them career-adjacent), I’d already made up my mind that 2020 would be a lost year. My contract at the New York Times had just ended and finding another journalism job was proving difficult. An editor for a new media website asked me to meet him for coffee in SoHo and never showed up. A tech company looking to staff up an editorial team had me come in for at least half a dozen job interviews and an edit test. I was so confident it was mine to lose that I finally talked myself into saying yes to said job at Major Tech Company, if offered, even though I didn’t feel very good about it. But at the last minute they decided to “move in a different direction.” Another website asked me to do a time-consuming edit test and interview with their editor-in-chief, who then ghosted…
