The End of the Gap Month
Aug. 1st, 2019 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
It's August! In just five days, I'll be 39 years old -- comfortably in the lap of middle age. I've been unemployed for about six weeks now.
Since getting fired, I've done a lot of thinking about who I am, who I want to be, and what I need to do to get there. I've been nursing a meditation practice that's been working well for me. I've written more in the past month than I have in the past year. I'm reading more, but still not quite as much as I'd like. I'm learning how to manage my time better, but I'm also learning how to proceed at my own pace. Slowly but surely, I'm reaching an equilibrium between action and observation. It feels good.
The job hunt is progressing bit by bit. Now that Coursera has fallen through, there are three places that I'd really like to land work -- Stanford University, San Jose State University, and Udacity (a Coursera competitor). I've applied to several positions at Stanford, a few at SJSU, and a couple at Udacity. I've only gotten a nibble for phone availability at the last one. It's exciting, even though the morale at Udacity is apparently quite low.
But there's an acquaintance working there who alerted me to the position, and I think his endorsement might have gotten me through the HR screening! Hopefully the phone interview will go well and I'll be invited for an in-person interview. The position actually states that I may be in charge of a few direct reports, but I have no experience with that at all -- I'll definitely have to ask about it through the phone interview, as well as stake my claim for a few of the other open positions. At the very least, it'll be good interview practice. :)
I'm thinking that my resume needs some serious work. I've finally signed up for a Monster.com account and took their free resume assessment. They didn't have very good things to say. The biggest problem area surrounds my education, to be quite honest. I don't have a degree, and at this point in Silicon Valley that's the minimum qualification for almost everything. I'm not sure how to spin that so I'm able to get past the automated pre-screening, and it's increasingly obvious that I need to rely a bit more heavily on my professional network to get my foot in the door. The only trouble is I haven't really been cultivating that nearly as much as I should. It's a little difficult to do that now that I don't have much to offer, but I'm looking forward to changing that once I get back on my feet.
I've been thinking a lot about my relationships over the past month and what I've done to encourage them. I think that I've been...not great at being a friend. I've always been a bit scattered and aloof, but that's gotten worse during my time at 23andMe and it feels like in some really important ways I've forgotten how to relate to people, to really be invested in them. I think part of that was just the social and emotional stress of the job, but a lot of it is the nature of online communication these days. Mostly what you see of people during the day is Twitter, where they're really not their best selves. The texture of the discourse has become so grating and hostile -- and as someone who is just stressed out by confrontation it's a lot for me to take. That, AND the stress of being on the verge of unemployment, made me want to check out of things in a major way. During the evenings and weekends, I really just wanted to be high and stay home.
But I'm learning that you can't really make things better that way. It's one thing to recharge your batteries -- it's quite another thing to shut yourself off from the world. One of the best lessons I've ever learned over the past five years is making peace with discomfort. If you're growing, or doing something difficult, or learning something new, discomfort is a part of that process. Discomfort is a part of growth, and fear is a sign that you truly care about what you're doing. Instead of taking my anxiety as a sign that something should be avoided, I think of it as a healthy indicator. I'm still not sure I've gotten to the point where I can reliably move past my fear, but these things take time. It's a process, and I'm learning to really dig it.
Anyway, I'm trying to be better about reaching out to people, being more open and giving and honest, more accepting of people as they are (within reason). I'm also trying to be more thoughtful about the way I make others feel, even unintentionally. Often, my absentmindedness can make people feel ignored. I want to be better about that. Intention matters, but only if it leads to right action.
Today I'll be focusing on catching up with writing and a few errands. I really need to put some work into my Patreon since I've fallen behind on that; I need to catch up with a couple of online courses that I've recently started -- "Pre-Programming", which talks about how computers and computer coding works at a high level; and "Blogging: From Basic to Superstar", which offers advice on how to cultivate an audience for your blog. I'll also be going for a three-mile run this evening, and I need to circle back to catch up with family on a few things.
Get to it, let's do it, in the words of Aunt Octavia. :)
Since getting fired, I've done a lot of thinking about who I am, who I want to be, and what I need to do to get there. I've been nursing a meditation practice that's been working well for me. I've written more in the past month than I have in the past year. I'm reading more, but still not quite as much as I'd like. I'm learning how to manage my time better, but I'm also learning how to proceed at my own pace. Slowly but surely, I'm reaching an equilibrium between action and observation. It feels good.
The job hunt is progressing bit by bit. Now that Coursera has fallen through, there are three places that I'd really like to land work -- Stanford University, San Jose State University, and Udacity (a Coursera competitor). I've applied to several positions at Stanford, a few at SJSU, and a couple at Udacity. I've only gotten a nibble for phone availability at the last one. It's exciting, even though the morale at Udacity is apparently quite low.
But there's an acquaintance working there who alerted me to the position, and I think his endorsement might have gotten me through the HR screening! Hopefully the phone interview will go well and I'll be invited for an in-person interview. The position actually states that I may be in charge of a few direct reports, but I have no experience with that at all -- I'll definitely have to ask about it through the phone interview, as well as stake my claim for a few of the other open positions. At the very least, it'll be good interview practice. :)
I'm thinking that my resume needs some serious work. I've finally signed up for a Monster.com account and took their free resume assessment. They didn't have very good things to say. The biggest problem area surrounds my education, to be quite honest. I don't have a degree, and at this point in Silicon Valley that's the minimum qualification for almost everything. I'm not sure how to spin that so I'm able to get past the automated pre-screening, and it's increasingly obvious that I need to rely a bit more heavily on my professional network to get my foot in the door. The only trouble is I haven't really been cultivating that nearly as much as I should. It's a little difficult to do that now that I don't have much to offer, but I'm looking forward to changing that once I get back on my feet.
I've been thinking a lot about my relationships over the past month and what I've done to encourage them. I think that I've been...not great at being a friend. I've always been a bit scattered and aloof, but that's gotten worse during my time at 23andMe and it feels like in some really important ways I've forgotten how to relate to people, to really be invested in them. I think part of that was just the social and emotional stress of the job, but a lot of it is the nature of online communication these days. Mostly what you see of people during the day is Twitter, where they're really not their best selves. The texture of the discourse has become so grating and hostile -- and as someone who is just stressed out by confrontation it's a lot for me to take. That, AND the stress of being on the verge of unemployment, made me want to check out of things in a major way. During the evenings and weekends, I really just wanted to be high and stay home.
But I'm learning that you can't really make things better that way. It's one thing to recharge your batteries -- it's quite another thing to shut yourself off from the world. One of the best lessons I've ever learned over the past five years is making peace with discomfort. If you're growing, or doing something difficult, or learning something new, discomfort is a part of that process. Discomfort is a part of growth, and fear is a sign that you truly care about what you're doing. Instead of taking my anxiety as a sign that something should be avoided, I think of it as a healthy indicator. I'm still not sure I've gotten to the point where I can reliably move past my fear, but these things take time. It's a process, and I'm learning to really dig it.
Anyway, I'm trying to be better about reaching out to people, being more open and giving and honest, more accepting of people as they are (within reason). I'm also trying to be more thoughtful about the way I make others feel, even unintentionally. Often, my absentmindedness can make people feel ignored. I want to be better about that. Intention matters, but only if it leads to right action.
Today I'll be focusing on catching up with writing and a few errands. I really need to put some work into my Patreon since I've fallen behind on that; I need to catch up with a couple of online courses that I've recently started -- "Pre-Programming", which talks about how computers and computer coding works at a high level; and "Blogging: From Basic to Superstar", which offers advice on how to cultivate an audience for your blog. I'll also be going for a three-mile run this evening, and I need to circle back to catch up with family on a few things.
Get to it, let's do it, in the words of Aunt Octavia. :)
