Documenting My Search
Disclaimer: this post contains a lot of background on why I’m searching now; if you are more interested in the nitty gritty of the “how” in my job search, skip ahead to my post on how to job search or start with my weekly progress updates. Thanks for reading!
background
In May 2022, I took a year hiatus from the workforce to travel around the western United States with my partner of 10 (now 11) years. This was a major step outside my comfort zone; I have worked almost consistently since I was 16, with only one 5-month break during college for study abroad, and that was only because I was not legally authorized to work in my host country, Costa Rica. Even then I filled my time outside class and travel by volunteering to teach English at a local school.
Despite my fear of the perceived instability around unemployment, this felt like an urgent opportunity. My partner, Lee, has a medical condition that, while fortunately not life-threatening, may become quite debilitating later on. He decided to cram his bucket list into ~12 months and I seized the moment to enjoy some of our favorite activities together in case we can’t in the future.
My rational brain reminded me that I’ve spent the past ~8 years of my career quite literally helping people navigate their own careers and job searches, so if anyone knows how to get a job, it’s me. This alleviated some of my unemployment anxiety, but that relief was offset by the shaky state of the US economy. Not willing to plan my life around something as unpredictable as the economy, I held my nose and closed my eyes, hoping for the best when I planned to reenter the workforce in spring 2023.
how I spent the last ~10 months
If you are interested in the details, feel free to check out my personal blog, but the tl;dr of the past year is that I spent it camping and hiking around the west, learning how to mountain bike, trying to learn how to farm (mixed success there), practicing skiing and photography, and indulging in precious, unrushed time with family, friends, and of course Lee. I usually fill my life to the brim, so I had been worried that I would get bored with so little structure in my life, but I almost never was. It has been an immense joy and privilege to have this chunk of time, and I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity.
I intentionally kept distance between myself and LinkedIn, reading about the job market, or doing research into possible next career moves. If I want to sound new-agey, I’d call this an effort to “be present,” but the more honest reason is I was just burnt out. My most recent job was not particularly stressful, but I had made myself physically ill with stress in the job prior to that, and I didn’t take any time off in between the two. I wanted to take advantage of this break to not only disconnect from work, but also disconnect from thinking about work.
I assumed that one day, perhaps four or five months into our trip, I’d wake up feeling refreshed and motivated to start making career plans, but as the months went on, that motivation never showed up. As December arrived, I started to panic; what if I had lost my mojo and never wanted to work again? Like most people, I do not have the luxury of simply not working forever, so I’d obviously need to get a job regardless of whether I want one or not. This left me facing a prospect even more terrifying than unemployment: what if I just had to take whatever job I could find and live the rest of my days in a miserable 9-5 routine?? Something that’s important to know about me: I need to care about what I do for a living. It would be a lot easier if I could just do some soulless job that earns a lot of money and that I never have to think about outside of work hours, but that’s just not how I operate. So I felt deeply concerned by the fact that even after eight months of R&R, I still hadn’t been struck by a stroke of inspiration.
Serendipitously, I spent a week with my sibling in December to help them wrap up their college applications (yes, we’re quite a few years apart in age). They, too, were struggling with motivation; they knew they wanted to go to college but could not drum up the energy to apply. Always eager to solve other people’s problems before my own, I put my coaching cap on and spent a week in Nevada breathing down their neck (lovingly, of course). It was there that I realized I forgot how to listen to my own advice; I kept telling my sibling that motivation doesn’t manifest itself, except for a very lucky few. Rather, most of us need to actually create the motivation ourselves through *sustainable* (this is important) habit-building. Once those habits, whether they be exercising, learning a new instrument, applying to college, or flossing daily, take root it becomes significantly easier to actually feel motivated to keep up with them. In addition to the habitual aspect of it, we also get little hits of dopamine when we make progress on our goals, which leaves us craving more.
As soon as I shared this advice with my sibling, I smacked my obtuse self on the forehead. This is something I’ve said countless times to my students - finding motivation at the beginning of a job search is one of the most common struggles - yet I myself had easily fallen into the trap of the motivation myth. This was the kick in the pants that I needed: I took the same organization system I had been using with my sibling, and while they were working on application essays, I spent a couple hours organizing my next steps and action items. I didn’t feel motivated to do this, I didn’t particularly want to do it, but I was no longer clinging to the myth that motivation should precede action. The bonus? I still got that little hit of dopamine from making progress, which was enough for me to validate to myself, “oh yeah, this is what I should be doing.”
today
It’s now February 2023, Lee and I are preparing to settle in Boulder, CO, and within the past ~week, the motivation showed up. Perhaps I created enough momentum by forcing myself to go through the motions, or perhaps financial anxiety is catching up to me after 10 months straight of draining my bank account. Either way, I no longer need to force myself to sit down and make progress; I instead feel drawn to do it. After texting with a friend who is also in the midst of a job search, she suggested I consider putting my search into writing. I do have expertise in the area, so perhaps this could be helpful to someone else. And selfishly, maybe someone will like what I have to say and this could help me in my job search. I’m not big on social media, and have always been wary of the transactional interactions that can be so easily facilitated by technology, but this is a self-limiting perspective. There are lots of ways to create meaningful content and interactions using technology, and given I’m about to jump into a job search in a new city where I know very few people, on the heels of historic layoffs in the tech sector, and after a 10-month professional hiatus, I think I might actually have a valuable perspective to share.
what’s next
I’ll share weekly reflections on strategies I’m using in my search, progress I’ve made, learnings from the process, and my honest feelings about how it’s going. Job searching is an emotionally draining process, and I fully expect this rush of energy I have right now to fade once I have a slow or disappointing week. I’ll keep things pretty general, and will not share names of companies, people, or specifics of application and interview processes (pro-tip: sharing this info would be a great way to disqualify myself with most, if not all, employers). I hope someone can find this series helpful, or at least validating, and I’d love to connect with anyone who has questions, is going through their own search, or, of course, who is hiring ;)
