I think of all the things I am grateful for in the professional world, the biggest thing is definitely the network I’ve become acquainted with in the last 3.5 years. Even if we had never even met because certain people had left the company before I even joined, people have been so friendly and eager to help others with job referrals, introductions, and even helping to search for new roles when I’ve been looking. It’s been lots of feelings of warm and fuzzy over the last couple of months; people are so eager to help in any way they can, even total strangers. And of the ex-colleagues I know and have worked with, they’ve been even more willing to do extra things for me, whether that means acting as job references, making introductions to hiring managers or higher-level management on teams I might be interested in joining, or just having conversations with me so that I can have a sounding board about what I want to do next.

I feel extremely lucky and privileged to know such good, talented, genuine people who want to help in whatever way they can. In many ways, it cancels out a lot of the bad experiences and the few bad and toxic individuals I’ve met over the last few years. Life definitely has been treating me well as of late.