It’s been about three months since my last post here and a lot has changed. For me personally, many of these changes have not been for the best. I’m hoping those who read this can help with the things that aren’t so great. So here are the top 5 changes that happened in the last 3 months.
1. My nephew made it through chemo CANCER FREE!
Spending so many days in the hospital was extremely hard on the young family my sister has. Sharing meals and looking after things that would’ve otherwise fallen through was a full family effort. Special shout out to my mom who was so giving of her time giving meals, cleaning, and providing support in any other ways possible. If there was ever a time to pull together it’s now. Seeing my family spring into action during a time of need has given me a sense of pride in everyone involved, knowing that we’re fully capable of helping up to our own. God’s hand was evident the whole time also, from donations to gifts of food and toys and of course lots and lots of visitors (when allowed by hospital protocols).
2. I turned 22, another life checkpoint
Since turning 22 I’ve started wearing glasses, while this may seem largely insignificant it turns out my eyes have been well…not quite as good as they could be for a while. It’s a quite literal shift in perspective. Working around computers so often lead me to try out the blue light blocking feature available on most glasses. Before you fact-checkers fillet me, yes I know there aren’t a lot of hard numbers on whether or not they help scientifically. I feel like they really do help reduce eye strain after long hours looking at a screen. With a new perspective comes new ideas, I’ll save most of those for a future blog though.
The my biggest struggle since turning 22 has been finding a new reliable job. Searching for a job as someone with a combined year worth of experience in tech and startups is something that I did not expect to do for long. It’s been about 3 months…coming away from Yoshi (my Praxis apprenticeship) and ClosedWon I felt as though I was ready to take on the world. I still am, yet I find that maybe Michigan isn’t quite ready for me. I search every day in hopes that the last sentence is false, yet as of writing this I have only found one employer that would be a truly marvelous fit for me and that company. I did everything I’ve been trained to do and followed up several times with additional resources and testaments to my skill.
1 phone screening.
2 Interviews; one with the head admin and department head.
0 Answers…nothing so much as a simple email telling me “You have not been selected”.
3. Growing through the struggle
Letting no hard lesson go unlearned seems to be a past time of mine. The long story lies in the past blogs on this site, but I think it’s safe to say I’ve done a lot of growing in the past year.
I’ve learned what the Michigan job scene has to offer and some of the ways to approach the market (traditional methods work well). It’s definitely very old fashioned and does not appear to change much aside from the third-party application systems. Most places seem unconcerned by the use of custom pitch decks and the like. However, all places like to hear the top 5 reasons you like them/their team/their company so that’s a great place to start. This can be a positive effect though because if you can’t think of 5 things you really like about a company, you probably shouldn’t be there.
I’ve become increasingly grateful for my experiences in the tech world and the startup scene alike. If you’ve had a hand in that journey thank you again.
Lastly, I’ve been wanting to become more resourceful and I have. With three months to twiddle my thumbs, most people would have done just that.
Instead of being inactive:
- I was able to use my time to rebuild my resume (and create several custom pitches).
- I made a new video with more intense editing effects than I’ve used in the past. I did this to keep my creativity flowing while learning new skills. Along this same vein, I made a Redbubble account to experiment with digital art.
- With some advice, I migrated this website to a new host! From Hostgator to Blue Host the process was fairly hands-free and took less than a week.
- Of course, I did all of this while sending in 1-4 applications per day, which is about 120 applications (on the low end).
Overall this has been a time of reflection for me, all be it somewhat forced, it has been a good chance to process the events of months passed.