A Temporary Newsletter

It was a Sunday evening. June 8th, 2025.

Three days earlier, I had announced the formation of Laid Off Launchpad on LinkedIn. And then I was sitting in front of my computer, staring at the draft of my first The Monday Boost newsletter, titled "The Resume Trap," and about to send it to 85 people who had somehow decided to trust me with their inbox. I had reviewed it probably six times. I was looking for typos. I was also, if I'm honest, looking for a reason to wait one more week.

There is something about the start of anything. A first application. Or first message to someone you haven't spoken to in years. There is excitement, but it lives right next to doubt. What I remember about that Sunday night is not confidence. It was more like... the decision that not sending it would be worse than sending it. So I hit send.

That was 50 editions ago.

My Intent

The first in that I hoped, at some point, these newsletters would become irrelevant to you because you had landed a job. You would unsubscribe not out of frustration but out of resolution. That was always the goal. An unsubscribe from a landed reader is a win I would take every time. This newsletter was meant to be temporary for you.

The second is that I did not plan to write this newsletter indefinitely, because I believe that lack of information for job searching, on its own, eventually stops being the constraint. If you have been reading for months and the search is still ongoing, the answer is probably not one more framework or one more tactic. At a certain point, what job seekers need is not more education. They need support.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

My Own Routine

If you have been reading for a while, you may have noticed a pattern in the topics. Some weeks were about sharpening skills to stay relevant. Some were about applying with intention. Some were about nurturing and expanding relationships. Some were about building the daily routine when motivation was missing. And some were about rejuvenating your energy.

Those five themes were not random. They map directly to a framework I built called the Daily LAND Routine.

Learn, Apply, Network, and Defend your Energy... The four pillars of a daily job search routine to be successful.

Each pillar got ten editions. But Defend is the one I want to leave you with, because it kept proving itself to be the part most job seekers needed to be reminded of, and the one I needed to sustain the routine publishing this on a weekly basis.

Committing to a newsletter is not always easy. There were Sunday nights where I did not feel like writing. There were weeks where I questioned whether any of this was reaching anyone, or helping anyone, or making any difference at all.

What kept me going was not motivation. Motivation fluctuates. What kept me going was the structure itself. The routine.

Defend to Sustain

But the people who I've seen navigate the job search best aren't always the ones who have the 'perfect strategy'. They know that productivity is won in small doses. That consistency beats intensity. And consistency requires you to show up tomorrow, which means prioritizing your energy today. They're the ones who did not postpone their lives until the offer arrived. They protected enough of themselves to win tomorrow.

That is what Defend is all about.