I got an email from an old co-worker the other day:

I was thinking about you and how you are a person I see as not being particularly embroiled in office politics, but also as having a lot of influence and knowing how and where to leverage it. I was curious if you had any words of advice for how you got to that place.

Of course I was happy to hear that I come off this way, and as I thought about how to reply, I found myself writing an essay.

We went through layoffs at work recently. Like a lot of companies, the belt is tightening, and the bathtub drain is getting blugged. I’m lucky to have not been laid off. Lucky again - this is the third “surprise” layoff where I’ve kept my job. I’m batting 1.000 but I know my number has to come up sometime.

I graduated from college in 2009, 9 months into the Great Financial Crisis. I was lucky to get into a good graduate school on a stipend that paid my rent, and even luckier to be leaving undergraduate without student debt. I was lucky that when I needed to quit graduate school I could find a government job.