Don’t worry! A work gap won’t kill your resume anymore!

After a series of unfortunate events that convinced me I had angered a deity, I lost my reporting job and entered a long and dark period of unemployment followed by a longer and darker period of customer service. This is what I learned.

Photo courtesy of Amy Hirschi on Unsplash.

This is a story I’ve been meaning to tell, but haven’t yet found the way. An author I admire asked me to collaborate on a memoir, but I still don’t know where my story ends or how it would all come together. I think about it a lot, but I’m just not ready.

Then, earlier this evening, I read an article about the work gap (for those who don’t know, this is a period of years without meaningful experience in your field). In it, the author talked about how work gaps on a resume aren’t the black mark they used to be. On the spot, I wrote a LinkedIn post sharing my related experience. This isn’t my whole story, and it certainly doesn’t cover some of the most important events during the time period — what I now look back on as the darkest four years of my life. But it does cover one of the most important reasons I was able to come out the other side in one piece.