Severance, New Resume, Community Online
Nov. 7th, 2025 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebeThere've been a few curveballs I'll need to roll with. Instead of a lump-sum payment for my severance, it looks like I'll be getting biweekly checks until Dec 24, as if I've been working 80 hours until then. I really thought I had read my severance agreement more closely.
It's not the worst thing, to be honest -- I'm sure I'll pay less in taxes that way and it gives me some amount of stability until the end of the year. By then, unemployment will have kicked in and I should be in somewhat decent shape after that for another month or two if I really need to stretch it that far.
I'm hoping it won't come to that, obviously. It's taking a bit longer to figure out my own swing, but that's OK. I've got the time. I'd really like to have *some* side hustle up and running before the end of the month, though -- preferably two. I think I can manage the Jackalope Serial Company, but I'll need to start networking with the Furry Writers' Guild and building an online presence for anything else. It would be a nice excuse to build dedicated reading into my day.
I've finished the first draft of my resume and already gotten valuable feedback from a friend in HR. I thought I did a pretty good job making my recent job experiences more attractive, but I'll have to go through and tweak it a bit more to be immediately punchy. The big issue there is I'm just not sure how to translate my effectiveness into raw numbers. You'd think after all this time having that lesson drilled into me I'd have a lot more practice with that, but here we are.
I'll take another pass at it once I've gotten the game to a "good enough" state and see what I can do. Once I've edited it, I'll send it to four or five more people to see what they think, then go through all of my job-search sites to update things. At least on LinkedIn, I'd really like to cultivate some kind of presence there -- maybe a more-cultivated feed to shape the spaces I'm engaging with and be a bit more active with the networking aspect.
So much of this is relationship-building, finding the people you vibe with, encouraging what they want to do, and helping out where you can. Then, the more people think of you as helpful and competent, the more they'll think of you for opportunities. It sounds fairly transactional when you put it that way, but it doesn't have to be if you come to it with the right attitude.
At this stage in my life, I really want to invest in people who share a vision for how we all get along moving forward. I want to be in people's corner, show up when it really matters, and have those people show up for me. I'm tired of throwing my energy into relationships that are only as ephemeral as my job, you know?
It might be a bit naive to think LinkedIn can be a place where I can cultivate genuine professional relationships, but that's what I'm going for.
In general, it feels like the Internet has become this mechanism for thoughtless and endless consumption. Everything has been reduced down to content laser-targeted to grab our attention, stoke our emotions, and induct ourselves into the evangelical wing for whoever gave us such nummy brainrot. More and more it feels like nothing's designed to give us time to sit with things, and that's a bummer. I want more of my Internet experience to be a thoughtful, amiable vibe. Not hurried conversations on our way to the next topic-of-the-day.
That's why I keep coming back to Dreamwidth, even if I can never build a consistent habit. It's the internet I want to inhabit.
It's not the worst thing, to be honest -- I'm sure I'll pay less in taxes that way and it gives me some amount of stability until the end of the year. By then, unemployment will have kicked in and I should be in somewhat decent shape after that for another month or two if I really need to stretch it that far.
I'm hoping it won't come to that, obviously. It's taking a bit longer to figure out my own swing, but that's OK. I've got the time. I'd really like to have *some* side hustle up and running before the end of the month, though -- preferably two. I think I can manage the Jackalope Serial Company, but I'll need to start networking with the Furry Writers' Guild and building an online presence for anything else. It would be a nice excuse to build dedicated reading into my day.
I've finished the first draft of my resume and already gotten valuable feedback from a friend in HR. I thought I did a pretty good job making my recent job experiences more attractive, but I'll have to go through and tweak it a bit more to be immediately punchy. The big issue there is I'm just not sure how to translate my effectiveness into raw numbers. You'd think after all this time having that lesson drilled into me I'd have a lot more practice with that, but here we are.
I'll take another pass at it once I've gotten the game to a "good enough" state and see what I can do. Once I've edited it, I'll send it to four or five more people to see what they think, then go through all of my job-search sites to update things. At least on LinkedIn, I'd really like to cultivate some kind of presence there -- maybe a more-cultivated feed to shape the spaces I'm engaging with and be a bit more active with the networking aspect.
So much of this is relationship-building, finding the people you vibe with, encouraging what they want to do, and helping out where you can. Then, the more people think of you as helpful and competent, the more they'll think of you for opportunities. It sounds fairly transactional when you put it that way, but it doesn't have to be if you come to it with the right attitude.
At this stage in my life, I really want to invest in people who share a vision for how we all get along moving forward. I want to be in people's corner, show up when it really matters, and have those people show up for me. I'm tired of throwing my energy into relationships that are only as ephemeral as my job, you know?
It might be a bit naive to think LinkedIn can be a place where I can cultivate genuine professional relationships, but that's what I'm going for.
In general, it feels like the Internet has become this mechanism for thoughtless and endless consumption. Everything has been reduced down to content laser-targeted to grab our attention, stoke our emotions, and induct ourselves into the evangelical wing for whoever gave us such nummy brainrot. More and more it feels like nothing's designed to give us time to sit with things, and that's a bummer. I want more of my Internet experience to be a thoughtful, amiable vibe. Not hurried conversations on our way to the next topic-of-the-day.
That's why I keep coming back to Dreamwidth, even if I can never build a consistent habit. It's the internet I want to inhabit.
