a new journey begins
Most people, even the ones closest to me, weren’t aware of the fact that I lost my job a week before the pandemic happened which resulted in a global lockdown. Two months down the line and I couldn’t be more excited about the new adventure that opens up in my career, amidst the whole corona-craziness. It’s been a very stressful and tough couple of months, trying to fill the void of not having a day job by exercising my other passion; making videos. But let’s start from the top.
The transformational year
Ever since I started my professional journey, I’ve always been fascinated and envious of “early-days startupers”. I always wanted to get out of the corporate game and try my luck at a promising startup. So back in February 2019, I joined this very promising and aspiring AdTech startup to lead its Product Marketing function. Throughout the course of 2019 I was lucky enough to work with some extremely smart and dedicated people in some challenging and interesting projects. If I had to give it a title, I’d say that 2019 has been a transformation year for both the company, as well as myself on a professional standpoint, helping me grow and acquire new skills.
I introduced new processes, messaging foundation, I built a team from the ground up and I introduced new programs that I’m extremely proud of, which helped the company scale its global efforts and end the year with a bang. Working at a startup environment means that no day is the same, and once you put out a “fire”, you need to jump on to the next one. In early 2020 things started taking a turn with the company shifting its direction from Product Marketing towards Customer Marketing, focused at building customer advocacy and retaining existing clients.
This wasn’t my game and certainly not in line with my skillset or career aspirations. So my boss and I mutually agreed that it’d be best to part ways at the end of the quarter. I needed a clean break to recharge and focus on identifying the next big thing for me.
The lockdown
I had big things planned for my time off. For the first few days I was planning photowalks in the city and storyboarding ideas for new videos. One of them included a road trip in Wales to shoot a sports car in one of the many scenic roads in the Welsh countryside. I wanted to experience one big adventure before I went on to my next gig. And since the market was hot, I wasn’t in any big rush. All the while Italy was getting hit by a new, lethal, virus. But I didn’t think much of it. Certainly not to the extend we’re currently faced with.
A couple of weeks down the line and the UK was preparing to go into lockdown. Being familiar with the culture of this country, I thought we’d be over it within a couple of weeks top. Enough for the dust to settle. What happened next, however, was petrifying. Not only the virus wasn’t going anywhere across Europe, but it proved to be even more lethal than everyone initially expected. There’s a big difference between a 2% mortality rate and a 10%.
The reaction from the economy was instantaneous. Travel companies, retailer businesses and big corporations started either firing people or furloughing their staff. All the interviews I had planned were being halted indefinitely, with only a handful of companies still actively hiring. But I wasn’t going to take any job. I wanted to be heavily invested in my next career move and needed that job to be somewhat of a “dream job”.
Needless to say, I started panicking. Those close to me know how stressful of a person I can get. All of a sudden, my “dream break” became an indefinite home-isolation during the second biggest global recession this world has ever gone through. I know that once we’re back up and running, we’ll be able to pick things up from where they’re left, but I’m not sure how long it’ll take us to get there again.
The strong one
The next couple of months were tough. Hearing people getting redundant right, left, and center made me feel hopeless and discouraged. There were days I felt hopeless with all the uncertainty. How much of an impact this would have in my personal life? How could I pay rent if things went on like this for a prolonged period? Should I start selling things that were non-essential such as my cameras, video equipment, bicycle, etc? How will this affect my professional career in the long run? These questions would be on my head day in and out, resulting in may sleepless nights.
But I consider myself one of the luckiest people alive. Not because I was able to find my ideal next step amidst all this. This was the result of hard work and persistence. I’m the luckiest person alive because I have the strongest, most empowering and loving woman, a man could dream.
She’s the one that gave me hope when things got tough. She’s the one who pushed me to go the extra mile and focus on the end goal. She’s the one who supported me in exploring new avenues should I wished. She’s the one who between her 18-hour work-days she always had a couple of hours to spare to prep me for the big meetings or become my soundboard. She’s the one who encouraged me to keep going.
The future is bright
There were many times where I could have given up. Countless days where I didn’t feel up to scratch and didn’t want to tell my background story for the nth time. But I was able to find a balance between practicing filmmaking and investing time in finding the right job, by working through a calendar. Organizing my days with tasks helped me maintain a structure and be even more focused on the things I needed to do. I didn’t schedule anything on the days I wanted to film, and I didn’t pick up the camera or open up FCPX on the days were I had to study or interview. That fine balance kept me going, motivated and excited for the things I had planned down the line.
In the end, I found my dream job amidst a global pandemic, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome and my decisions. Maybe I didn’t have the time off I initially planned, but I got to spend time with the one person that means the most in my life. And for all these, I’m grateful to my wife, as this success is as much hers as it is mine.
To new beginnings…
