On being unemployed

After writing about being laid off in April, I went almost five months without paid work. As I wrote in that post, I started with some severance. After that, I learned how to participate in Colorado's unemployment insurance benefits system. Just before reaching that program's limits, I was offered a position at Colorado State University, and I accepted. Colorado recorded 2,400 people hired in September 2026, and I was one of them. Surprisingly, I found the job posting on the Larimer County Economic and Workforce Development Program's current job openings list, using "python" as a keyword. Not on LinkedIn. Not in my professional network. The algorithms were feeding me nothing but jobs at defense contractors with cringey names stolen from Tolkien, and my personal network was not hiring. I stumbled onto a local job on a local job board and nailed the interviews. It was not how I imagined that I would find a new position. I've benefited from good luck. I'm lucky to have found the posting…