I was laid off around 7 years ago. It was a massive hit to my self esteem and confidence and I actually considered leaving tech and going back to wood working (

I was laid off around 7 years ago. It was a massive hit to my self esteem and confidence and I actually considered leaving tech and going back to wood working (I used to build furniture). I managed to bounce back somewhat accidentally. A guy needed help with a Wordpress store he used to sell his woodworking products, so I did some stuff for him. He was so happy with what I did, he ended up telling other people. They got a hold of me about some work, then other people, and other people... and suddenly I was building bespoke applications on long term contracts making 3-4x as much as I was before I was laid off. It was stressful because I didn't have the experience to suddenly run my own business, and I was bad at it. I did an okay job writing code, my customers were happy with that, but I'd invoice a month late, I'd forget to track time and inevitably bill too little because I couldn't bring myself to charge what I knew it was worth, I was a bad communicator at times, terrible at estimating time in certain conditions, etc. That was a huge help in building the self awareness I needed to move forward in my career. Still working on that, and still super grateful for that layoff in retrospect.