Dan, thank you for sharing this experience. I plowed the same path in 2018, let go from a struggling start-up, on the market as an older worker in a tech field. Terrifying yes. But, like you, I found many good things about the experience: it pushed me to get clearer on my accomplishments, what I liked and didn’t like in a workplace, and to get my portfolio together and tackle some projects that helped me grow my skills. I ended up in a new job that would never have happened without losing the first one.