There Is Nothing Wrong with You

My mother never had a job outside the home and my father worked at one job for 35 years at Arizona State University.

Nothing about their life experiences prepared me for the world of work I was going to encounter.

My first job was a bad fit. I didn’t even know that was a thing, so I blamed myself. I was my university’s valedictorian, I went to grad school on a full-ride Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship and graduated with honors. And yet… I was bad at my job. Turns out I’m a terrible executive assistant because I’m a big picture thinker. Good to know but devastating at the time.

My second job, the whole company shut down and we were all laid off. And on the story goes. There was no social media then, no way to know if everyone my age was struggling (they were) or if the economy was the culprit (it was). So again: I blamed myself.

9/11. More layoffs. I learned quickly there was no stability in advertising, so I went freelance. And I thrived. I loved coming in, solving hard problems, and moving on to the next challenge. I worked with 30+ agencies and production companies, always learning, always growing. Always exciting.

Until the pandemic. Overnight, everything stopped. With no full-time job to “go to,” it felt like the world had ended. But it didn’t. I worked again. And when Mozilla offered me a full-time role in tech, I said yes. I had just been through the most destabilizing moment of my life. I’d mastered leaving, maybe it was time to learn staying.

I stayed four years. Longer than anywhere. Six managers, six reorgs. It might as well have been six different companies. And then, this May, I was laid off. It turns out it’s much harder to be laid off than to simply leave when the project wraps. A painful lesson I learned early on and had to re-learn.

Now I’m freelance again, and I’m thrilled. Truly. I’m working with brilliant colleagues and kind, highly talented client teams on work that is both technically advanced and creatively considered. This is the most fulfilled, and relaxed and truly free I’ve ever felt in my career.

And yet, some people still say, “Hopefully something comes of it,” meaning a full-time job. As if that’s the only happy ending.

Here’s what I’ve learned: when you’re freelance, you’re not the outsider, you’re the one they called in. You’re there because something important needs to happen quickly and they trust you to lead it. Freelance isn’t a pause between “real” jobs. It’s a role of leadership and impact.

You can build a portfolio career that is textured, resilient, and deeply your own as a freelancer, one that isn’t dependent on a single company’s reorg chart or stock price. A career that stays alive because you do.

So if you’re in that in-between space and unsure of what’s next, wondering if you did something wrong please remember this: nothing is wrong with you. The world of work changed. We’re just catching up to it.

Safety isn’t only handed out with benefits paperwork. And full-time isn’t the only story.