My 9-month journey. Was it supposed to happen?

Nine months. Did it take that long for a reason?

I learned in June 2020 that my contract at Microsoft as a senior consultant would not get extended due to pandemic-related budget cutbacks. What I had expected to be 12–18-month engagement had come to an unexpected end. Well, not entirely unexpected when one considers the impact the pandemic started having on life in March and caused just about everyone to reconsider their hopes and expectations for the rest of the year. But it was certainly unexpected from the standpoint of having planned to not only help my consulting firm grow its Microsoft business, but also to help market its brand more broadly in order to grow its visibility as a digital transformation innovator. A long nine months was coming up.

Nine months that started with the 4th of July weekend, when instead of celebrating with picnics and fireworks with friends and neighbors like I normally would with my wife and kids, I was laying low thanks to COVID-19 and wondering how to accelerate the progress of a job search that had gone nowhere in the past few weeks. It wasn’t just any summer that is generally quiet for anyone job searching; it was an unprecedented pandemic summer where most companies were slowing down their activities and spending to figure out how to keep their current employees instead of hiring new ones. It was a bleak time, but I just kept telling myself to push forward and not slow down, no matter what.

Nine months wasn’t even a consideration for me at the time, even though the experiences of many experts said it very well could be, and despite how quiet July and August indicated it very possibly would be. I started working with my college friend and fraternity brother Tom Perry, founder of Engaged Pursuit, to help me up my game with a better professional story, LinkedIn profile, and resume. Working with Tom P (I have to differentiate since I’m Tom B) helped me prepare for the trickle of interviews that slowly began to materialize in September and October as my efforts finally seemed to have generated not just a faint job search heartbeat, but maybe also some legs. Still, nothing came to fruition as the new year began and eventually became February.

Nine months was starting to look more real. I had been a finalist for a handful of senior marketing leadership roles along the way by now, only to find myself with the silver medal each time, and it felt no better than a participation ribbon. To say that it was a demoralizing time would be the understatement of all understatements. I had massive burnout and fatigue as I questioned my areas of focus, my preparation habits, my overall approach, my faith, my place in life, and more. It was a dark, sad, and painful time for me. Darker and sadder and more painful than anyone around me knew.

Then, nine months indeed became real and gained significance at the end of March. I had responded earlier in the month to an unsolicited email from a recruiter about a role at Cisco. After a few interviews and exactly nine months from the day my role at Microsoft came to an end, I joined Cisco as a senior consultant and am leveraging my background in cloud, virtualization, software-defined storage, converged and hyperconverged, and digital transformation infrastructure technologies to drive messaging and content production for VDI solutions marketing to support GTM and sales enablement strategy. It's a step in a positive direction, I’m working with smart people who have graciously welcomed me, and it finally feels like progress on my journey toward a destination.

But I keep wondering if there is more meaning to those nine months than landing at Cisco for the time being. Almost all of us humans spend nine months preparing to enter the world in the flesh. Each of us develops uniquely during this time and comes out as a unique person, with unique talents and a unique future ahead. While I’m still struggling with my faith after a dark, sad, and painful nine months for me and my family where prayers never seemed to get answered, I keep wondering whether those nine months were what God had in mind for me to go through as a rebirth of sorts. I wonder if the things I would otherwise not have done during those nine months, such as being available to take my parents to numerous doctor appointments, reconnecting with old friends and former colleagues, or humbly witnessing the goodness of others along the way who reminded me of the importance of helping those who might be struggling, were all part of what He knew I needed to go through to properly get to the next chapter in my life. Am I convinced of this? Nope. But it really does make me wonder.