It’s estimated that more than 159 million Americans cast their ballots in the 2020 election — a rate not seen in more than a century, and one that provided the surest sign yet that the election was, in fact, a referendum on President Donald Trump’s polarizing first term.

Get-out-the-vote campaigns emerged from every point along the political spectrum: Celebrity endorsements for Trump and his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, proliferated on Twitter and Instagram; in Georgia, Stacey Abrams and a robust coalition of grassroots organizers helped turn the state blue for the first time in 25 years; GOP-aligned coalitions like the Lincoln Project and Voters Against Trump bought up TV ad space and rented billboards in Times Square, all dedicated to lambasting the president. 

Complicating an already high-stakes election was Trump’s bluster and misinformation about mail-in voting, which ultimately didn’t hinder a record number of mail-in, or absentee, ballots. An estimated 65 million votes were cast remotely, leading to a feat of counting that saw vote tabulators working tirelessly in the aftermath of Election Day before the race was called in Biden’s favor. 

But while the election has been decided — despite Trump’s false claims to the contrary — many Americans have been left confused and on edge, trying to parse why some of their neighbors voted the way they did. Democrats don’t understand why, for example, after four years of a presidency full of racist messaging and a botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 election wasn’t a cleaner sweep for Biden. Republicans, meanwhile, want to know how they lost key swing states they won four years ago.

Who were the Black and Latinx voters Trump picked up by a margin of 4 and 3 percentage points, respectively? Who were the Trump supporters who’d had enough of the chaos and switched to Biden in 2020? And what does all of this say about how much we know about what motivates people to vote?

The 2020 election represented a pivotal moment of political awakening for many thousands of Americans — a chance to find their voice, whether through voting across party lines or casting their ballot for the first time ever — in an election that promised to shape the contours of the country for decades to come. For some, the choice was politically motivated, but for others, the decision to vote was the result of a growing sense of social obligation, galvanized by the increasingly partisan discourse playing out on social media. 

“I had people who would get angry with me when they found out that I had never voted before,” Maggie Pearl, a 25-year-old from Brooklyn who voted for the first time in the 2020 election, told Vox. “I felt more social pressure this year than I’ve ever felt in the past. People would say, ‘Why don’t you care what happens to this country?’ I think it took seeing other people’s passion, and the momentum it took to get Biden elected, to really turn me into someone who will vote actively in the future.”

Vox spoke with seven first-time Democratic and Republican voters about what made them cast their ballots. Here’s what they had to say about their participation in what some have described as the most fraught election in American history. Interviews have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

Those who voted for a Democratic president for the first time

Nini Jones, 57, Orlando, Florida

“The shift for me was four years of listening to Trump’s mouth”

I usually vote for the Republican ticket — I’ve been a registered Republican for 30-plus years. I did vote for Trump in 2016, and the biggest thing for me then was that I wasn’t a Hillary [Clinton] fan. 

Most of the time, Black people are Democrats, but for me, I’m kind of a rebel — I have to research and find things out for myself. I researched the Republican Party, and that’s where I aligned on the economy, on immigration, and other things, so I chose to register as a Republican. 

The shift for me was four years of listening to Trump’s mouth. I couldn’t do it anymore — the way he degrades people, the divisiveness, the bullying, the racist talk, putting down women. It just started to get to be too much.

He is attacking the Black community when it comes to the whole racial aspect of people getting gunned down in the streets by police officers. And when he gets up there and boasts about how he’s treated the Black community better than Abraham Lincoln — I just can’t with this guy. 

It felt important to me to vote in this election because if we had four more years of Trump, I think we would’ve been deeply divided, where it would be almost to the point of no return. “Make America Great Again,” what does that mean? What does that envision? Are we going back to the ’50s? The ’30s? The 1800s? I just think America would’ve been going down a deep pit, and that there would be a lot of suffering in this country if Trump were still at the helm.

I actually have to be honest, I’m going to change my party and register as an independent at this point until I see what happens, because I just can’t stand for what I’m seeing happening in the Republican Party.

Gerard Harbison, 62, Lincoln, Nebraska

“This is a long-term shift for me; there’s absolutely no way I’m ever going back”

I’m a naturalized citizen, naturalized in 2003 from Ireland, and I registered as a Republican in 2004. In January 2020, I switched my registration. 

When I first came to Nebraska in 1992, a couple of my colleagues would say that the weird thing about Nebraska is that Republicans are actually to the left of the Democrats. It was a relatively moderate Republican Party when I got here, and it’s just shifted more and more to the right since then. There’s an element of frog-boiling in this: You’re there and you’re identifying with them and you aren’t noticing exactly how far they’ve pivoted. 

Back in the 2000s, my colleagues in physics would ask how I could support Republicans when they don’t believe in evolution and so on, and I’d say, “Yeah, there are quite a lot of them like that, but there are a lot of Democrats who don’t believe in GMOs or vaccines,” and so on. But it really isn’t split so much anymore; the climate change denial started getting to me, and obviously evolution denial I think is worse now than it was 20 years ago. And then Trump was nominated, and that sort of did it for me. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. 

The Trump presidency was what made me notice the water had gotten hot, but if anyone thinks the GOP is just about Trump, they’re deluded — it’s part of a general right-wing swing of the Republican Party that’s been going on for a long time. So it was an election of not just what was wrong with Trump but what was wrong with the GOP, who will say anything to get elected. I’m convinced they believe very little of what they actually profess.

This is a long-term shift for me; there’s absolutely no way I’m ever going back. I think there’s room for a reasonable conservative party in America, but I see no evidence the GOP is changing or will change. It’s a near-fascist party right now, as far as I’m concerned.

Kevin Nather, 33, Cleveland, Ohio

“This year I looked at Biden, and he seemed to legitimately care”

I’ll be candid and say I voted for Trump back in 2016. Quite honestly, I wasn’t even sure then how either candidate would perform, but I knew that I felt like we needed a big change in this country. He had a great message: “Make America Great Again.” Did I really fall in and think he was going to make everything better? No, but I was actually kind of hoping that he sincerely wanted to make a change in the country. 

However, over the years, I didn’t get the feeling that he truly cared for the American people. It didn’t seem like he cared for anyone. I think that was a big deciding factor going into this election, that I believed he seemed to cause a lot of division. This year I looked at Biden, and he seemed to legitimately care. 

I ultimately had a big departure from the Republican group overall over the Covid response. I was on Facebook, and people were protesting having to wear masks. I was trying to just say, “Hey, please just be safe, we don’t know what’s going on with this,” and I was called a bully, I was told that I was trying to take away somebody’s constitutional rights by saying they should wear a mask. I hate to generalize people, but a lot of the people that were protesting having to wear masks seemed like they were following everything Donald Trump had to say. It was almost like they praised this man as a god, like he was infallible. 

For me, that was a big moment that really kind of clicked for me, and I just felt like I needed to sit back and reevaluate. I ended up actually deleting Facebook a couple of months ago because it was just too much. 

Going forward, I think I’m open to any candidate, but right now, with my thoughts and beliefs and ideas where they are, I’m leaning more toward the Democrats. In the end, politicians are always going to say a lot more than they’re actually going to do, but I want to see people who truly care and who truly want to make America better.

Maggie Pearl, 25, Brooklyn, New York

“This election, I was living my truth way more than I was four years ago”

I was 21 and in college in Omaha, Nebraska, during the last election, and you can imagine how conservative it is there. I had just recently come out to my family as gay, and they were kind of conservative as well, so I didn’t want to just throw so much in their face about wanting to vote blue then — it would have been like coming out to them a second time, in a way. 

The candidates in that election just made me feel like I would have been voting for the lesser of two evils, so it didn’t appeal to me too much. When Trump got elected, I also definitely felt like, “It’s just going to be another old white guy — how much could things change, really?”

This election, I was living my truth way more than I was four years ago. The main reason I voted was because I want to get married, and I was afraid that if Trump won, I wouldn’t be able to have that luxury.

I also felt like this election was higher-stakes than the one we had four years ago; this time, I felt unsure of what the aftermath would be, law-wise, and what it would mean for my personal life. If there were changes to same-sex marriage or adoption rights … I’m thinking more about my future family, I guess, and that’s really why I voted: to help myself, but also to help others like me. 

Those who voted for a Republican president for the first time

Jennifer, 43, Illinois

“I started listening to Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro, and they made a lot of sense to me”

I’ve always voted Democratic, and my family has always been Democrats; we still are. I voted for [Barack] Obama both years and loved him, and in 2016 I voted for Hillary Clinton. 

Believe it or not, I did not make up my mind to vote for Trump until the last couple of months. I’ve had Twitter forever, but I never used it for anything, so I actually made a separate Twitter account a while back and just followed conservatives. I started listening to Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro, and they made a lot of sense to me; I liked a lot of what they had to say. 

When it comes to Biden, I was not happy with his tax rate proposal. I don’t agree with defunding the police, and that’s a big issue for me, and I know that a lot of Democrats are really pushing that. I’ve seen all of the rioting and the looting, and that’s not Trump supporters that are doing that for the most part. I see Biden and [Vice President-elect Kamala] Harris both kind of pandering to those guys, just like I see Trump pandering to the far right. [Note: Biden has repeatedly declined to support calls to defund the police, instead committing to investing in community projects and mental health resources that will allow officers to do their jobs more efficiently.]

This election was a lot more polarized than ones we’ve had in the past. My mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, they’re Never Trump; they’d vote for anyone besides Donald Trump. They would literally disown me if they found out I support him, it’s that bad. 

Jennifer’s last name is withheld to protect her anonymity.

Tyler Reeves, 29, Meridian, Idaho

“When people say that voting for Trump makes you a bad person, I tell them they don’t actually know who they’re saying these things to”

I’m 29 years old and had never voted in an election before this one, so this was my first time ever voting.

I’m not a very political person, and normally I try to stay away from political arguments and politics in general because I don’t want to lose a friend. I mostly like to agree to disagree, and I always value friendship and family over politics. When it came to voting in past elections, I never really had any interest. 

But this year, I decided that I wanted to get my voice out there and be heard. I was happy with the last four years of Trump’s presidency, and I am a Christian, so he’s the candidate that most aligns with my values on abortion. 

I do think that the stakes are higher now, and social media played a role in getting me out to vote. Celebrities like Chelsea Handler, Mark Ruffalo, and some others were just being really aggressive on Twitter about saying, “You have to go vote this way.” I’m not the person that’s going to look up to a celebrity and say, “Yeah, I want your political advice.” How I voted was a personal choice; I have my own voice and life. 

When people say that voting for Trump makes you a bad person, I tell them they don’t actually know who they’re saying these things to, especially when they’re calling people racists and homophobes. I grew up with friends who were Black and Hispanic, I’ve had gay friends, and I’m a quarter Hispanic myself, so getting those kinds of attacks really hurts. For me, being honest about my beliefs is the only way I know how to defend myself.

Mark Bailey, 62, New York City

“Voting for a Republican for the first time felt liberating to some degree”

My mother raised me to be a Democrat, like almost all Black people are raised. So it’s only recently that I started to identify with the Republican Party. 

The Democratic ideology has changed a lot over the past few years, and now it’s been taken over by so-called progressives. I feel that the Democrats’ platform regarding abortion is irresponsible, and I feel that their policies of trying to do everything for everybody where no one completely gets help is a farce. I have grown up in poverty my entire life, but every election year, especially presidential election years, we Blacks vote for the Democratic candidates mindlessly without accounting whether they’ve done anything to help us or whether they deserve our vote. Our condition has not improved since the ’70s, but we continue to vote for them.

Voting for a Republican for the first time felt liberating to some degree. Like I said, Black people are basically raised to vote Democrat. I got a lot of flak for saying I liked Trump from relatives, long-lost relatives even. I had one relative that I connected with recently on Facebook, and we started chatting and reminiscing, and as soon as I mentioned I supported Trump, boom — I was blocked.

I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In her case, I was basically just following the Democratic narrative, and that was the only thing guiding my vote. I never particularly liked her. But in 2020, I felt that the Democrats’ platforms and policies and ideals have shifted. Black people might be politically liberal, economically liberal, but we’re socially conservative at heart. 

Brianna Provenzano is a freelance reporter based in Brooklyn.

Jessica Chou is a Taiwanese American independent photographer currently living and working between Los Angeles and San Francisco. For this series, Chou photographed our voters remotely from the Bay Area. The voters used their own personal phone devices and were directed by Chou through a video phone call. 

No corner of the global economy has been left untouched by the coronavirus’s rapid spread. 

In the United States, jobless claims have soared past 26 million, pushing the country to the brink of an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression. Experts continue to warn that despite a valiant global effort to “flatten the curve,” the virus could reemerge with renewed vigor just in time for flu season in the fall. Without a vaccine, it seems increasingly likely that economies around the world will continue to stall, and workers are poised to bear the brunt.

In response to the economic ruination, US lawmakers passed the CARES Act — an economic stimulus package designed to offer badly needed relief to individuals, large corporations, and small businesses alike. But a rocky rollout of the benefits, coupled with an overwhelming surge of new applications choking unemployment offices around the country, has left millions of workers in the dark, unsure when or even if help is coming.

Many of the newly unemployed people that Vox spoke to said they would be willing to take up work deemed “essential” — checking out groceries, driving ride share, portering at hospitals — if it meant being able to keep up with their bills and sustain their livelihoods. 

“If I do catch [the virus], it’s going to be a bit worse for me, with asthma, than others,” said Mark Deeks, a 35-year-old sports analyst living in England. “But I’ve thought about that and about whether that would limit what I would be prepared to do, and the reality is no.”

Others, like 49-year-old administrative professional Thomas Inskeep, stressed the toll sudden joblessness has taken on their mental health.

“Some days I’ll get in the car and drive for half an hour, just around the roads in my town, in my neighborhood,” he said. “It’s only a couple of miles, but at least that way I’m getting some fresh air, some sunlight.”

Below are some of the stories of the newly unemployed, condensed and edited for clarity.

“I’ve always been a very self-sufficient person, and maybe it’s just my pride, but I want to be able to take care of myself and others”

Haley, 23, barista living in Tampa, Florida

I’ve been laid off from the craft coffee shop where I work for about a month now, and I can’t really say I’m surprised; coffee is a luxury product, and it’s not like I’m an essential worker. This is the first time I’ve been unemployed since I was 18 and fresh out of high school. The coffee shop actually does have another location that’s still open, but they didn’t offer us any work there, so that hurt a little bit. 

I’ve applied to over 70 jobs since then — I have experience in animal hospitals and I’m a pharmacy technician as well, and then just administrative stuff. Pretty much just anything I think I’d be pretty competent at doing I’ve tried for, and it’s just been rough. 

It’s been pretty weird to be out of work; it gets to you slowly. I’ve always been a very self-sufficient person, and maybe it’s just my pride, but I want to be able to take care of myself and others. To have the rug pulled out from under you, to have to rely on others … it hurts.

Florida has a really shitty unemployment website, and I tried for over two weeks to get benefits online — waking up at 3 am, staying up until 5 am, doing it in the middle of the day. The website will constantly kick you out, so I ended up printing out the paper application and sending it in about a week and a half ago. The system is totally overloaded, and they’ve admitted to that.

I did get my stimulus check, so that helps a lot to make sure I can still pay for my car and car insurance, because I live in a state where that’s required, but realistically $1,200 will last me maybe a month between rent and bills. I actually moved in with my boyfriend to help reduce the cost of rent because of the pandemic. It was planned for down the line anyway, but it was just like, well, there’s no better time than now. 

The coffee shop management also started a GoFundMe for employees, but it hasn’t gained too much traction. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it …. full disclosure, I don’t have a lot of trust in my employer, the company that I work for. They didn’t even initially tell us about the GoFundMe, we just looked online and were like oh, that’s weird, why would they start a GoFundMe without telling us about it? Some of us are worried that we’re not even going to get the funds they’ve raised. 

“I occasionally have anxiety attacks and panic attacks”

Thomas Inskeep, 49, administrative professional living in Santa Cruz, California

It’s funny, in some ways I’m actually maybe better suited to deal with this because in the last few years I’ve actually dealt with quite a bit of unemployment. In 2017, I missed quite a bit of work because I was dealing with some pretty severe depression, and I was unemployed for parts of 2018 and 2019. That was really, really rough, and I ended up having to do a GoFundMe — no one wants to do that. 

I had just started my most recent role through a temp agency at the end of February, an administrative role at a food distributor that sources organic food. I absolutely loved it. About a week and a half in, I was already getting a little nervous about going into work because since I have diabetes, I’m immunosuppressed, and they have an open-plan office. About the second week of March, they finally said they were moving to work from home, but I wasn’t able to perform my role from home because so much of it was dependent on me being physically in the office. At that point, no one was even wearing masks yet. So I said I didn’t feel like I could continue going in. I spoke with the temp agency and they were supportive and understanding and told me to apply for unemployment. So I did that, and my last day of work was March 13.

Through the additional unemployment benefits recently approved under the CARES Act, I’ll get an extra $600 each week through the end of July. So this week when I got unemployment, I actually got an additional $1,200, which is massive. I’m getting less than $300 a week in unemployment benefits because my last couple of jobs haven’t paid particularly well, so that money is an absolute lifeline to me. I wasn’t able to pay my bills before this. 

I live in the Santa Cruz Mountains, not in a metro area, and I normally love it. But right now, it’s brutally isolating. Since I live with both depression and anxiety, I saw a psychiatrist through my old insurance who would prescribe me Xanax as needed — I occasionally have anxiety attacks and panic attacks. But I’m low on it now and I can’t get more because I’m not her patient anymore.

To be honest, for anxiety I’ve been self-medicating with booze. It’s funny, I’m not a huge drinker in general and I had basically quit drinking once I got diagnosed with diabetes, but I have done more drinking in the last month than I have at any time of my life since college. It’s kind of like, well, I have a very limited number of Xanax, so I need to reserve those for emergencies — like the last time I went to the grocery store and people weren’t social distancing. That requires a Xanax! But otherwise, I’m using liquor to cope.

“Packing up and moving in the midst of a lockdown is not easy to do, but I did it because I had to”

Mark Deeks, 35, NBA sports analyst living in England 

I work in and around the NBA, which is very hard to do in the first place as an Englishman, and the NBA was one of the first dominos to fall in what’s turned out to be the closing of the entire world of sports, essentially. 

I was mostly working for Sky Sports, the NBA partner in this country, which is our equivalent of ESPN, but only on a freelance basis. As soon as sports ended, they stopped all freelance contracts. It’s fair enough and I don’t begrudge them that, but due to the nature of zero-hour freelance contracts, I only get paid if I work, and there is no work.

I was living just outside of London, which is still one of the priciest areas in one of the world’s most expensive countries to live in. But I couldn’t afford to stay there, so in the midst of this lockdown, I’ve had to pack up and move to a place in the middle of absolute nowhere, a pensioner’s retirement village of all places. It’s the British equivalent of Florida, except without the sun.

Packing up and moving in the midst of a lockdown is not easy to do, but I did it because I had to — I haven’t got any income. We’ve got more in the way of a social safety net than the US does, to the point where it’s gotten very complicated and convoluted how many avenues there were to apply for assistance. They ended up consolidating them into one, something known as universal credit, and that’s essentially the unemployment benefit equivalent of less than 100 pounds a week. So those who have been furloughed, you get 80 percent of your salary, but that doesn’t apply to me because I wasn’t salaried.

The supermarkets have been hiring across the industry right now, driving — I would do anything for work right now, to be honest with you, and it’s not gone well so far. As an asthmatic, I’m a little bit worried about the virus, because if I do catch it, it’s going to be a bit worse for me than others, but I’ve thought about that and about whether that would limit what work I would be prepared to do, and the reality is no. If I can be of some use, I will do those things.

I wouldn’t say I’m riddled with anxiety, just because I’m a bit resigned to never having control — I’ve never had control over this career because it’s so stop-start, it’s so high turnover. The changing nature of the media landscape has affected me, and that is constantly anxiety-inducing, so it’s not dramatically different, in that respect. It’s always a struggle — you’re bouncing around from whoever will take you to whoever will take you, strike up a good relationship, but then things close down, someone leaves, it turns out the money isn’t there. It’s a difficult business that I’ve chosen.

“How can I pay for electricity or rent if I’m only making $81 a week?”

Aidan, 25, retail worker/custodian/cook, living in Missouri

I worked two part-time jobs that rolled around to be about full-time hours, one for a local charity that benefits abuse victims and one for a retail store at the mall. So I’ve had two experiences being furloughed! 

The retail store very quickly took me off of the schedule about mid-March, and about a week later, the mall stores all started shutting down one by one. A week or two after that, I had to do a conference call with everybody in the district from that retail store. We were told that everybody was furloughed, en masse, from that call on. The company did pay us two weeks’ worth of money, but it averaged out to be only about $150.

I was also working at an abuse shelter that also ran a thrift store, where I would help out. I had been there for about three years, and suddenly I was furloughed — again, the reason was basically, “We don’t need you in, we have no foot traffic, we don’t need an extra person.” My boss told me that I could start cleaning the shelter as a janitor at the day care that the shelter operates, because it’s very important everything the kids use has to be sanitized. After about a week and a half to two weeks, they furloughed me from that, because they couldn’t keep paying a separate custodial position, even though it’s essential work.

Within the next few days I started the unemployment process. It was tricky for me; the directions were not clear. Before the CARES Act went into place, even though I was working two jobs, pretty much full time, it would say that I was only eligible for $81 a week. That stressed me out because I have bills, I have an apartment, and if I don’t have much of an income, how can I pay for electricity or rent if I’m only making $81 a week?

Then, through connections that I have in town, I heard that there was a cooking job opening up a couple of towns over, about 10 miles away, at a retirement home. That’s the new job I’ve picked up, and it’s of course completely different from the retail jobs and helping people at the abuse shelter that I was used to. They’re really understaffed and they badly needed the help.

At first, I was really just rolling with the punches, that’s the type of person I am; things happen and I adjust on the fly. But within the past week, starting a new job in a new field I’ve never done before, for very long hours, and thinking, “If I don’t have this job, I could be homeless, and I don’t think I can do this job” — I just broke down.

“A lot of DJs have been doing live sets on Instagram. … It’s kind of fulfilling people creatively, but financially it hasn’t been the best”

Caleb, 24, DJ living in Brooklyn, New York

I’ve been DJing for, like, three years now, and for the past year it’s been pretty close to full time. I heard directly from some of the spots I play that they were closing down due to the virus, but to be honest, [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo shut down the bars and then there was kind of just a general understanding that the gigs weren’t going to go on. Some places reached out and said, “We’re shut down, we’ll let you know when we’re back,” but for the most part it was just unspoken.

I was very anxious. My initial reaction was to check my bank account to see how much money I’d saved up. I’ve been DJing more and more full time, so it’s completely what I rely on. I did file for state unemployment benefits, maybe the second week after everything got shut down, and I got approved for unemployment, but it was, like, $173 a week. It’s something, but it isn’t going to help very much. There was also a DJ email chain going around with a bunch of relief funds to apply for. I’m very grateful for the people setting up these funds, but it just seems like there’s not enough to go around. Between DJs and bands and musicians and comedians and actors, there are just so many creatives out of work that are trying to tap into these funds and get some help. 

A lot of DJs have been doing live sets on Instagram, and I’ve done a couple of those and asked for donations, and I actually got a decent response. It’s kind of fulfilling people creatively, but financially it hasn’t been the best. I’m going to see what I can get from unemployment and from the government, and if it’s not enough I guess I’ll drive for Pizza Hut or do bike deliveries or work at a grocery store. I don’t mind too much, and I know people my age aren’t at high risk. 

I worry about the community — DJs are a pretty big part of nightlife, but they’re an additional cost for bars, and I’m just thinking about some of the places that aren’t quite as profitable and can barely afford to book DJs as it is. What if it’s even harder to book us in the future? A place like Pianos in the Lower East Side should be fine, but a lot of the smaller bars, which are the gigs I’m doing a lot of the time, might not have enough income. I’m definitely worried about it and pretty uncertain about how it’s all going to pan out. I’m trying to keep high spirits, but it’s a little hard.

“I felt betrayed”

Vina Hutchinson, 63, researcher living in Maryland

Everybody on the DC team got an email asking us to log in to this remote meeting, but I did not foresee the termination coming. I worked as a researcher based at the Library of Congress, for a third-party company with clients that liked certain topics researched. They let the entire DC team go — five people — so it wasn’t just me. They did say that when we got out on the other side of this we were invited to reapply for our jobs, but you know, that’s no guarantee of a job. My degrees are in journalism and history, and those aren’t really fields that have a lot of job prospects. 

My first reaction was that I felt betrayed. I’ve worked for this company for almost three years, I’ve worked really hard, I made sure I was diligent about working 40 hours a week, about meeting deadlines. … I get that they needed to temporarily let us go for business reasons, but to just terminate us outright, was, I think, a little unfair.

They offered us a pretty good severance package, and I’ve just been waiting to get that before I apply for unemployment. Unemployment only lasts for so long, you know, so if I have money in the bank, why would I apply for benefits now when I’m going to need those down the road?

I’ll be applying for government benefits for the first time this week. I’m a little apprehensive because you’re reading a lot online about people having difficulty navigating the system. Everybody online says to apply in the middle of the night because the unemployment websites are more likely to let people on then. I’m also taking the DMV approach — never go to the DMV on Monday or Friday; you have to go mid-week. 

Between my severance and unemployment, I’ll probably be okay on rent until the end of July, possibly August, but I’m not sure after that. By August 1, my severance will have definitely run out, and the $600 weekly supplement from the federal government ends at the end of July, so if I don’t have full-time employment by then, I’m going to have to look at what my options are.

I live with my adult daughter. She’s been fine; she actually just finished a school program in December and was job-hunting when all of this hit. New graduates don’t really have the option of unemployment, so we’re both just taking things one day at a time and reminding ourselves that we’re in this together.

Right now, while I’m stuck at home waiting for things to open back up, I’m using it as a time to explore some of the other ideas I’ve wanted to do, like starting a history newsletter. It helps with not feeling anxious, it sort of takes your mind off of things — rather than sitting back and thinking, “Oh it’s a pandemic and it’s so horrible I’ve lost my job,” just sort of thinking, “Okay, that chapter of my life is over — what’s next here?”