These are weird times. When the Angi RIF went down at the start of the year, I kind of felt a sense of relief. I loved the job, felt good about doing it a few more years, but suddenly I didn't have to worry about any of the things. It's the kind of break you only get between jobs. So for the first month, I pursued just the leads I had through my network. One showed promise, one was clearly not for me, and four others ghosted me.
One month in, I started applying to all of the things, and trying to find humans behind the things, with limited success. Things have changed dramatically in four years, since I last looked. I'm pretty convinced that humans are less involved than ever, which seems like a pretty horrible way to go about hiring. I use the robots for a lot of different things, and it's stunning how much they get wrong. I wouldn't leave hiring to them. Regardless, it's discouraging.
At the same time, I get excited about the potential of everything. It could be a self-defense mechanism, masking anxiety in optimism. It's around everything, like what I could do, how I can spend all of this spare time, how I can set us up for empty nesting, etc. After the requisite morning job seeking, I've been pouring energy into TogetherLoop, and I'm the happiest I've been coding since building MLocker.
But I find myself tentative toward joy. Some of that is parenting, which is hard lately (always?). And I catch myself feeling like I don't have the time to be not experience joy, which is about as midlife as it gets. It's wild that even in this stage of life, I'm still looking for the same things I did as a teenager or college kid. Where do I fit? How do I define my value? Am I having positive impact on the world? Sometimes I don't like the answers I come up with.
I need a vacation from this. Fortunately I paid for one late last year.
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