How I Built a Career as a Successful Travel Blogger

Seventeen years ago last month, I walked into the CareerBuilder.com headquarters in Reston, VA thinking it’d be another ordinary day at work. 

Only on this day, there was an all-staff meeting in the break area with the heads of our parent companies.

Over the next two days, everyone at the company was laid off (with severance, thankfully). 

I’d been with the company for over three years, ridden the rise of excitement as we IPO’d, and subsequent disappointment as our stock price dropped.

We were eventually acquired. And now, our parent companies were firing us.

I was angry, confused, thousands of dollars in debt with my credit cards, burdened by $500/month car payments for my new VW Jetta, and free to sit around my apartment thinking about it all for months while I looked for a new job.

As upsetting as it was to feel this loss of control, it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. 

Five and a half years…