A couple of things. People are not dumb. They know when someone they either barely know or haven't spoken to in years hits them up to talk about "their journey" at the company they work at, or their career in general it IS because the person is looking for a job and very possibly has just become downsized. Unless the person is a really good friend they are probably not going to want to "take this meeting". And if it's a real friend you don't need to do the theatre of pretending to just want to chat about careers for fun. Also, if you are downsized from a large company, it's very likely that you won't even get an interview with that company again for an actual in house job again for about 3 years if not more. This is because when a company downsizes a group of people, they have to justify it legally with the dept of labor ( ie this had to be done because of financial losses.) If they downsize an employee and rehire them 6 months or a year later, it triggers suspicion with the DOL that they didn't actually need to offload that employee in the first place.
That's good to recognize, and then set boundaries around. For example, no more than three video calls a day might be a rule. See what your energy levels allow, and honor them.
