I’ve been doing most of my writing on Quora these days, which has meant, of course, that I’ve been writing a lot less here. I’m going to start cross-posting some of the longer and more interesting questions & answers here so that this blog doesn’t completely go idle.

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I was 25 years old. My son was less than two months old, and my wife was no longer working (to stay with him). We had two car payments and a mortgage on our very first home. I’d just left a very well-paying job at IBM to take a chance with an exciting new job at a tiny, local company.

I got laid off three weeks before Christmas.

I remember it was a Friday, just before lunch. The company, a consulting agency, had just lost a major contract and needed to make cutbacks. It was also a cooperative (i.e., owned by the employees). I was a fairly recent hire, and hadn’t yet been made into a full member. So, despite being one of the more qualified people on staff, I was one of the ones they let go.

After spending the better part of the weekend in a panic, I figured the only thing to do was to start looking for a job. I went after it with a vengeance. Resumes sent, phone interviews, in-person interviews, and lots of time searching job boards and following up leads.

In the end, I landed at Amazon. It turned out to be one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. I learned how to be a manager, launched a major new feature on the website, and learned a ton about building large-scale websites.

I also learned one of the most important lessons of my life. No matter how bad things seem (and they seemed really, really bad at the moment), the best way to proceed is to evaluate your current options, pick the best one, and get started.