Well, it’s been a doozy of a fortnight in Diliaur-land. I skipped the week of July 8-14, and it shall remain skipped.
I think I have figured out another way to structure these posts. I do want to continue to note down accomplishments in order to track my time, but this is also the chance to further reflect on and process events in my week (and practice my skills—however nonexistent—as an essayist).
I had a phone interview on Friday which I did not think went very well, (although I am still waiting to hear back for certain). The feeling of failure that generated is definitely something which has sat with me this whole weekend and which I have been trying to process. It is a strange thing, finally being outside academia and fending for myself. I’m feeling the particular sting of having been too much of a generalist, and having been confused for a lot of my time in graduate school, and for still not really knowing what I want to do with myself. I remember being 19 and being convinced I would not figure out what I wanted to do “in time”. Well, here I am 10 years later, still unsure. Looks like if all else fails I can take up a career as a consulting psychic.
I did have some wonderful conversations with friends and loved ones about the interview, about The Job Interview as a Platonic form, and about motivation, determination, and intentionality. These conversations were the most poignant part of my week.
Regarding the interview, I came to realize I did not prepare correctly. I looked up information on the company, yes; I prepared some questions to ask the interviewer, yes (but not enough); I polished my resume. Still, I failed to prepare answers for behavioral interview questions, which felt very abstract to me. I also got some indications that my resume is still not formatted clearly enough, and I’m considering adding a headline to condense all the education and experience such that the hiring party knows what my skills are and what I’m looking for.
The more I talk about the interview, the more easily I can accept it as a learning opportunity and not a failure (or, at least, not just a failure). Like most people I’ve always had a strange and unhealthy relationship with failure, but I’m trying to get to the point where I embody such phrases as “fail early, fail often” (in a sane way, of course). It’s difficult, because I suffer from perfectionism, which as has been covered before leads to things like anxiety, procrastination, inferiority complexes, impostor syndrome….All lovely things. What can I say, it’s a process. Success is a journey. Etcetera.
A few hours after my phone interview, my wise friend Nelson and I had a long conversation over bubble tea (technically, mango and mango-avocado boba smoothies). We occasionally talk about personal and professional growth. This was one of those evenings, and as I explained my disappointment with the phone interview and my anxiety about my over-generalization of skill (and hence lack of deep-enough specialization), he shared a phrase with me:
Common sense is not the same as common practice.
Just because we take and give advice, does not mean that we put that advice—or best practices in general—into action. To reap the benefits of what in hindsight seems like common sense (like preparing the “right way” for a job interview), we must put action into practice.
This has really stuck with me. It relates to the “if-only” talk that failure generates in me. If only I’d prepared better. If only I’d organized my resume more clearly. If only I’d… If only… If-only is seductive because it allows me to fantasize about an alternate timeline in which I’d succeeded in the past, but it is toxic because it prevents me from processing how to use the lessons learned to succeed in the future. If-only convinces me that something is so obviously common sense that I should have done it, and ignores context. This is one garbage way my brain behaves, and remembering that common sense is not the same as common practice is going to help me buck it.
Later I watched a video on YouTube about a phenomenally talented ballerina who had started out later than most dancers do (14 vs 7 years of age). One phrase she said struck me:
…the improvement that you see is directly proportional to what you put in. You decide how hard you work, and you decide how much better you get, and it’s all on you.
Rio Anderson
This relates to my anxiety about my professional skillset. I have a lot of skills, some of which I’ve spent hours in a day, for weeks, months, or years developing. However, I often have more of this energy for “hobbies” (such as photography and illustration) than for professional skills (such as JavaScript development). Not that none of my hobby-skills could not be turned into a career, but the path is outside of my comprehension at the moment (and often would require me starting my own business).
This uneven distribution of energy makes me feel like I am adrift in the current of inspiration, when really—like Rio says, above—it is up to me to decide what to invest in. Determination keeps going when inspiration runs dry.
Going forward, I’m going to try to be more mindful of my time, and more intentional with it. Success in that endeavor is going to be a process, but I think in actively processing it like I am doing right now whilst writing this post, I am at least heading in the right direction. And that actually brings us right back to the whole point of this blog series, isn’t that perfect? (Just kidding, perfect doesn’t exist.)
Takeaways:
- Drop the if-onlys and put best practices into action to affect the future
- Failures are learning opportunities
- I have more control over the development of professional skills than I think (I just have to be organized about it…which is another topic entirely)
- Be mindful of how I spend my time, while I spend it
Those Were This Week’s Big Thoughts; Now for Things I Did
- Started another crochet top project (more hope for this one—also OMG I just realized I LEARNED from the FAILURE of my last top! wow, the universe is just handing out blown minds this week)
- Got back in touch with the Island Ark Project; had to take a hiatus to finish my thesis but now I can volunteer again!
- Started learning about CSS grid using the Scrimba course (I love Scrimba)
- Applied to a couple more jobs
- Got back into watercolor painting and used tube paints for the first time! (Sadly seem to have lost my travel paint kit, and also my pencil case…)
Going to go hard on the code study for the next week. I’m thinking the next post will be along the lines of time management, planning, and chunking goals. See you in a week!
Code 680 