At the end of 2025, I was let go by the company among many other talented people for the purpose of workforce reduction and resource reorg. While it wasn’t a total surprise, it still caught me off guard right before the holiday season.
It was my first time experencing a layoff for my entire career. I survived 3 rounds of that at Tripadvisor, but unfortunately, I was not fortunate enough to sit through this one. I was so unprepared, yet life decided to drop me into the deep end regardless.
Life is like a river, flowing forward regardless of your plans. When something happens, it happens. The only thing you can do is keep going.
– Yi
A turbulent portfolio reboot
It’s not easy to revitalize a portfolio unprepared. You’re missing all the key elements you need – assets, mentality, and time.
When you had to dig through all the past Figma files to find useful designs to download in a rush, you basically failed to find the ones you actually need. Selecting visual assets for case studies is a highly calculated practice. It requires a simoutaneously developing story to solidify your visual strategy. However, that would a luxery for me this time. As many as I could, I had exported images for all the “composed” pages that I came across, with a relatively high chance of missing out a few screens here and there.
Mentality is perhaps the biggest “monster” blocking my path. Because I had no intention of job hunting for the past few years, I am entirely out of practice with the specific storytelling required for case studies. It is a jarring mental shift to move from the comfort of a steady role into the high-pressure mindset of a “hunter”. Reconnecting with the logic of projects from years ago feels forced and draining, especially when you no longer have the original files to ground your memory. It feels like being asked to cook a full meal with only a few scattered ingredients and a hazy recollection of the recipe.
December can be the worst time to lose a job. It creates a difficult irony: the season when you are meant to slow down and focus on family is exactly when you feel the most pressure to speed up and focus on your career. With holiday responsibilities piling up and children home from school for the remainder of the month, your personal life and professional search are in constant friction. Focused time—the deep, uninterrupted kind needed to rebuild a portfolio—becomes a rare luxury that is almost impossible to find. You aren’t just fighting for a new role; you’re fighting for the quiet mental space to even begin the process.