Rebuilding After the Pause: Career Lessons From Six Months Being Out of Work

Enjoying time outside!

After decades of steady work as a documentary editor, I found myself out of the edit room for six months. I want to share what emerged for me from that unexpected pause — lessons about resilience, reinvention, and showing up with new intention.

When we finished editing "The Dalai Lama's Gift" in the fall of 2025, I began to look for work and found that there was not a lot out there. Fewer green lights, once-reliable series cancelled, production companies I had done a lot of work for suddenly quiet.

That was the beginning of the longest stretch of unemployment I've had. Six months with tiny gigs here and there. No long format projects. A few sizzles for hopeful producers.

This time away from the edit room was not something I would’ve chosen, but it gave me space to rethink how I present myself, how I find work, and how I collaborate.

Being Intentional About Who I Am as an Editor

For better or worse, I've long been aware how much my identity depends on my work as an editor. It's the area of my life where I feel most confident, and I see how even short stretches between jobs would make me begin to lose my sense of self.

During this time off, I've had to work on that vulnerability and make my identity as an editor more integrated in Jennifer Beman the person. Part of that became an exercise in really appreciating who I am as an editor.

• I am someone who believes in storytelling that respects the audience's intelligence.

• I am someone who sees meaning in the raw material of life, and shapes it with care.

• I am someone who thrives in deep collaboration — who loves wrestling with structure, finding the emotional spine of a story, and building something true.

  
  

I also confronted the fact that when it comes to opinions on an edit, I have a lot of them, I'm pretty direct in expressing them. My recent experience with "The Dalai Lama's Gift" helped me towards a more Buddhist-style of collaboration, and I'll continue to work on that.

I aim to emphasize more of the joy in creating together in the work we do.

Learning to Market Myself (Finally)

I was fortunate to have a side hustle to throw my attention to in the period of career uncertainty. Through growing my side project, BioGraffs, I had to learn something I had resisted for years: how to market something from the ground up.

It’s one thing to edit a story for someone else. It’s another thing entirely to stand up and say, “This is my work. This is my voice. This is what I can help you build.”

Somewhere in that messy, humbling process, I realized I needed to apply the same skills — and the same courage — to marketing myself as an editor.

I saw, with some chagrin, that I had let my career coast on autopilot for a decade or two — trusting that good work would always be enough. That reputation alone would carry me.

It carried me a long way. But the industry has changed. And the truth is: we have to keep reintroducing ourselves, even to people who already know us.

Reframing My Story While Being Out of Work

As part of marketing myself I did two things: started a blog and starting posting on Linkedin. And in this I realized: I have wisdom to share. I have a body of lived experience that's worth offering back to the community that's given me so much.

I began to think about how I could articulate the deconstruction of scene, how we create meaning, and the metaphor of editing as it applies to life. HOW I edit.

The free time gave me the push to finally put those thoughts into words — to share essays about storytelling, meaning-making, and what a lifetime in the edit room teaches about life itself.

So that’s what I’m doing now: showing up with more intention, more visibility, and more confidence in the value I bring to a project.

I know I’m not alone in facing the uncertainties of this industry. So many brilliant and seasoned creatives have found themselves in the same boat—paused, waiting, wondering what’s next. I've had some amazing conversations with some of you about where the industry is headed, and how we will continue to be a part of where it goes.

I commit to remembering all this now that I have work: I don't want to go back to my old habit of putting my head down and just doing good work. I want to continue being out there with you all.