I lost my job because of COVID19.
Tags: mentalhealth, covid19, career, blog
Published: 2020-04-24 14:31:39

I'm writing this as soon as I got off the call where they hit the nail right in the coffin of my career, so I might be blogging emotionally right now, which as we've all seen in the movie "The Social Network", is the best thing to do right now.

As a brief background, let me summarise my fucked up situation. I used to work in a quaint little startup in Bangalore, India, where I currently live. I've given about 2 years of my life to that startup, watching it grow from its inception. Then, I made the big decision to decide to move closer to my girlfriend, who is in Berlin, Germany right now. In the first month of searching for a job, I got it. I couldn't believe my luck. I got through 3 rounds of interviews, they loved my profile and my technical skills and when I spoke to the CTO, they immediately offered me the job. It was the happiest day of my life.

I risked everything, did the whole 9 yards. I left my company, I told my family about the great news, I shared the big news about me moving there finally and got her hopes up. I honestly felt like I did the right thing for once in my life.

Fast forward to now, just getting off the call where the whole dream of me moving to Germany has been axed off, it's becoming a little hard to find a reason to even be alive right now. My career has been everything to me since a very young age. If you've been a part of my life's journey, all I've ever done is code, code, code, all in the hopes for a good job, stable life, and to be able to protect my family.

I can't blame anyone, to be honest. It's just the hand that I've been dealt with. I've never been a gambling man, but for some reason, it feels like I gambled in my current life to get a better life, and a bouncer called Corona beat the shit out of me. Things feel bleak right now. My dad is supportive, my girlfriend is in tears, as am I.

I spent the better part of this whole lockdown and being unemployed, building two-three products, all open-sourced, just to help people. I believe in karma a lot. The good you do to others will come back to you. So I didn't work on anything else but just kept building ideas that would help people. Ironically, I made a resume builder that I would have to use now to apply for jobs. It's fine if you laughed at that last part... I did.

There's no wrongdoing by anyone here. The company that was going to hire me, they did the difficult thing by calling me and telling it to my face, they promised that if things do get back to normal, that they would get back to me, but they don't know when normal is... I truly respected them for it, and have no remorse.

This news comes only a day later after I released my new website where I had proudly stated, that I got a job with a startup in Germany of all places. Almost a dozen people wrote back to me asking how I did it, how I made the transition. I felt like I was inspiring so many others who dreamed of the same, that they could do it. Now, it just feels heartbreaking.

I'm writing all of this, I guess, not for the likes, not for the sympathy, but... just because I shouldn't go crazy drowned in my own sorrows. I didn't want to burden my girlfriend to have to listen to me cry. I didn't want my dad to feel bad looking at his son's break down. I didn't want to share the humiliating reversal of good news with my friends who had such high hopes and genuine happiness for me.

So, moving on... (yes, I know it's been less than an hour since the call, but we gotta move on some time)... what's next? Do I look for a job here in Bangalore? Do I try my luck again and maybe get another job in Berlin? Do I ask for my old job back? Do I wait out the Corona Roller Coaster and hope they call me back?

I'm not without options, I'm just without hope.

Thank you for reading.