The Dissolution of Ego
Jul. 7th, 2019 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
Last week I had a final interview with the VP of Services for a little company called Coursera. They're a platform for online courses, only they're a lot more advanced than most of the others I've seen. Not only do they offer courses from university professors, they also offer certificates, course specializations, and full-ass degrees from accredited institutions. If I'm hired, I'd be working with universities and businesses on technical issues with the platform. Given the mission of education accessibility, I'm actually pretty excited for the possibility. This is something I really want to do.
Only I face-planted the interview right there at the end. The VP asked me why I left 23andMe and wasn't satisfied with my response, so she kept digging. And sweet summer child that I am, I kept trying to evade her. I got the feeling that she was quite annoyed by that, and the rest of the interview felt more like a standoff than anything. The recruiter asked me if I could provide contact information for my direct manager at 23andMe, which tells me she definitely wants to follow up on the end of my time there. I'm not sure if that's enough to sink me, but it isn't a great feeling. Chances are I won't know anything until the middle of the week.
In the meantime, all I can do is move forward and put out more resumes, see what I can find on CalJOBS, fill out the unemployment paperwork and all that. I'll definitely want to ask around about the best way to frame what happened with 23andMe so I can avoid that minefield as gracefully as possible. It's a bit frustrating, because while I disagree with their assessment of me, I don't want to denigrate the company or get into the details of the gulf between my expectations and theirs. But people are going to want to know about it, and I'll need to have an answer that doesn't feel slippery while also pushes focus elsewhere. It's an art, that.
The 4th of July weekend has been pretty chill so far. Mostly, the husband and I have been catching up on a few TV shows like "Arrow", "The Flash", and "The Handmaid's Tale" -- which has been as amazing as everyone says. It honestly feels like a kind of social horror story; when you're genuinely afraid of your country falling into theocratic authoritarianism, the series feels like a disturbingly plausible guide of how it can happen here. So many people don't want what's happening, but at the same time they're afraid of speaking truth to power. And Gilead is fairly ruthless when it comes to crushing dissent. It's no wonder people have stopped resisting.
These days, one of the things that I'm doing my best to focus on is connecting with people more closely, genuinely. It's difficult for me to be as open and accepting as I'd like to be, because my instinctive reaction to just about any kind of closeness is to pull back. I'm so used to being rejected or teased about the things I think or like that I often find it's not worth opening up. But at the same time, I'd like to be more confident about who I am and what I think -- and part of that is being open about it without shame. It's all a tangle right now, but it's something that I'll be working on while I have the time to do so.
Being so self-focused can really distort your perspective. Everything becomes a means to improving your end, and you start to mold your environment and relationships towards what serves you best. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that up to a point, but if left unchecked it becomes the default mode and you lose touch with the idea that not everything you experience is about you. Getting outside of your own head is essential for seeing the world as it really is, seeing your place in it clearly, taking genuine pleasure in what's around you. Softening the edges that I've built up around myself takes work, but it's work worth doing. It allows me to plug in to something bigger than myself, which is what feels the most natural to me. I want to re-orient my life towards that if at all possible.
This week, the focus is on building habits that put me back out into the world. Meditation sessions for 30 minutes; at least 30 minutes of exercise outdoors when possible; meeting friends that I haven't gotten to see in a while. And being a bit more active on Telegram, because there are so many folks who've reached out and gotten nothing but silence from me. I'd also like to double down on my writing practice, just so I'm more consistent and diligent about putting stuff out there. Looking for work is important, of course, but so is realigning my actions with my true purpose.
Only I face-planted the interview right there at the end. The VP asked me why I left 23andMe and wasn't satisfied with my response, so she kept digging. And sweet summer child that I am, I kept trying to evade her. I got the feeling that she was quite annoyed by that, and the rest of the interview felt more like a standoff than anything. The recruiter asked me if I could provide contact information for my direct manager at 23andMe, which tells me she definitely wants to follow up on the end of my time there. I'm not sure if that's enough to sink me, but it isn't a great feeling. Chances are I won't know anything until the middle of the week.
In the meantime, all I can do is move forward and put out more resumes, see what I can find on CalJOBS, fill out the unemployment paperwork and all that. I'll definitely want to ask around about the best way to frame what happened with 23andMe so I can avoid that minefield as gracefully as possible. It's a bit frustrating, because while I disagree with their assessment of me, I don't want to denigrate the company or get into the details of the gulf between my expectations and theirs. But people are going to want to know about it, and I'll need to have an answer that doesn't feel slippery while also pushes focus elsewhere. It's an art, that.
The 4th of July weekend has been pretty chill so far. Mostly, the husband and I have been catching up on a few TV shows like "Arrow", "The Flash", and "The Handmaid's Tale" -- which has been as amazing as everyone says. It honestly feels like a kind of social horror story; when you're genuinely afraid of your country falling into theocratic authoritarianism, the series feels like a disturbingly plausible guide of how it can happen here. So many people don't want what's happening, but at the same time they're afraid of speaking truth to power. And Gilead is fairly ruthless when it comes to crushing dissent. It's no wonder people have stopped resisting.
These days, one of the things that I'm doing my best to focus on is connecting with people more closely, genuinely. It's difficult for me to be as open and accepting as I'd like to be, because my instinctive reaction to just about any kind of closeness is to pull back. I'm so used to being rejected or teased about the things I think or like that I often find it's not worth opening up. But at the same time, I'd like to be more confident about who I am and what I think -- and part of that is being open about it without shame. It's all a tangle right now, but it's something that I'll be working on while I have the time to do so.
Being so self-focused can really distort your perspective. Everything becomes a means to improving your end, and you start to mold your environment and relationships towards what serves you best. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that up to a point, but if left unchecked it becomes the default mode and you lose touch with the idea that not everything you experience is about you. Getting outside of your own head is essential for seeing the world as it really is, seeing your place in it clearly, taking genuine pleasure in what's around you. Softening the edges that I've built up around myself takes work, but it's work worth doing. It allows me to plug in to something bigger than myself, which is what feels the most natural to me. I want to re-orient my life towards that if at all possible.
This week, the focus is on building habits that put me back out into the world. Meditation sessions for 30 minutes; at least 30 minutes of exercise outdoors when possible; meeting friends that I haven't gotten to see in a while. And being a bit more active on Telegram, because there are so many folks who've reached out and gotten nothing but silence from me. I'd also like to double down on my writing practice, just so I'm more consistent and diligent about putting stuff out there. Looking for work is important, of course, but so is realigning my actions with my true purpose.
