Redundancy gave me something I didn’t expect. Time.
Not the kind you plan a holiday around. The unstructured, uncomfortable, has to be discovered kind. Time you weren’t given for a reason. Where you have to work to find the reason.
I could have filled every hour with the job search. I did, most days. Some days it took eleven hours and gave me nothing back. But somewhere in the middle of nearly a hundred applications, I stopped treating the space as a waiting room and started treating it as a room of my own to build, design and live in comfortably.
I went deeper into therapy than I’ve ever had room for while working. Real time to sit with the layers. Where I’ve come from. What shaped me long before any job title did. The patterns I’ve carried since I was a child. Why I equate my worth with my output. Why stillness has always felt like danger. Prayer and meditation sit alongside the harder conversations now, because for me they were never really separate rooms.
I started to notice my nervous system and moods the way I used to notice shifts in my calendar. With more honesty than I gave it before.
For most of my career, success looked like a number. Pipeline created. Revenue supported. A title. A promotion. I’m still proud of every one of those numbers. But I’ve started measuring something else alongside them.
Can I sit in a room without checking my phone? Can I hear a difficult truth about myself and not spiral? Can I say no to something that looks good on paper because it isn’t right for me? Can I be still?
A calm nervous system is ambition that has stopped running from itself.
I used to think patience was a virtue for other people, the ones who could wait without needing the outcome by tomorrow. For those not driven by their careers or those few fortunate enough to find contentment “off grid”. I’m learning it properly for the first time in my thirties. Tolerance for the parts of myself I used to edit out before anyone could see them. Patience for others yes, but importantly, for myself. Active, proactive, still.
This came from doing the work, and just as much from stepping back from it. Weekly therapy. Long walks with no destination. Camping with no signal. Evenings with a book instead of my phone. Weekends where my phone stayed at home and nothing fell apart. Honest conversations with people I trust, including myself. Reading people and rooms differently because I’m finally paying attention to my own signals instead of overriding them.
I got back on my skateboard, signed up for a women-led course, and found a community that has nothing to do with work. Nobody there asks about my last panel presentation or my next role. We fall, laugh, get back up. It reminded me how much I need physical outlets and people who show up for their own sake, not because I’m useful to someone’s pipeline or can get them a connection to land their next deal. Hobbies that align with who you actually are build a different kind of network that I’ve learned is vitally important to keeping me sane.
I still believe in building things from scratch. I still want the hard problem, the thing that doesn’t exist yet, the room where I can make an argument and watch it land. That hasn’t changed and it won’t.
What’s changed is what I’m willing to sacrifice to get there.
Authenticity used to sound like a buzzword to me, a LinkedIn word. I know now it’s the foundation everything else stands on. Every good thing that’s come to me these last few months, clarity, a new opportunity I’m excited about, a version of myself I actually like, has come from being more honest.
Resilience now means building a life sturdy enough that discomfort doesn’t need to be endured through gritted teeth. A life that’s enjoyable, fun and abundant. A successful life.
If you’re in your own gap right now, whatever put you there, my advice is this. The time is not empty. It only feels that way until you stop trying to fill it with the same old version of productive. Going through motions. Grinding without purpose.
Let the stillness teach you something. Then take the lesson with you into whatever comes next.
Bek Kulidzan is a Senior Partnerships, GTM and Solutions leader currently based in the UK. She writes about career, health, and building things from scratch. Find her on LinkedIn or X.