Trinette Faint spent six years at Google as an executive business partner, writer, events manager and PR coordinator. In November 2024, at age 53, she was unexpectedly let go.
Her manager told her the layoff was performance-related. 'I never felt that was true,' she says. Two weeks before the layoff, her senior dog Avery had died. She was also scheduled for knee surgery in late December.
'I was traumatized, angry, and shocked,' she recalls. She reached out to her surgeon and moved up the procedure so recovery and therapy would be covered by insurance before it ran out. Jumping back into tech was not top of mind.
Then came the strange coincidence. Four months earlier, Trinette had written a scene for her TV script 'Peri Does Europe' in which her character Peri was fired from a tech job the day before flying to London to meet friends — and then pursued her dormant creative dreams.
'I wrote the scene four months earlier, and like Peri, I was going to London the day after I was let go,' she says. 'I absorbed this startling revelation, and apparent manifestation, and took it as a sign to fully be the creative person I always was but had been too busy with work to be.'
To satisfy unemployment requirements she applied for executive assistant, communications and marketing roles. Recruiters ghosted her. 'This process produced its own anxiety, and I ultimately decided to scrap it all and dive fully into my creativity. When I did that, things started to change.'
She booked principal acting roles in commercials. Attended SXSW — where a producer approached her at a happy hour and cast her in a series based on a real tall Black woman. Attended the London Screenwriters Festival. Produced, co-directed, and starred in her short film 'Party Pants,' winning Best Actress at the Berlin Indie Film Festival.
After visiting Montpellier last summer, she decided to move there. She is now working with Paris- and LA-based producers on her 'Collette's Caleb' TV pilot.
'Pursuing what you want in life can be financially destabilizing, terrifying, and isolating. It can also be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but you have to start. Take a small step every day toward your goal, and before you realize it, you'll have made a giant leap.'