Burnout: Unemployment Edition

Recently I have been experiencing a lot of burnout, and as I write this I am still trying to heal. This morning I went on a bike ride for the first time in about a month. It felt good to be back in the saddle, as it were, but it seems that biking may be more of a challenge to stay regular with as an activity. For one thing, when my asthma gets worse (which seem to be every time I have a cold) I can’t do aggressive cardio. I feel really ashamed of myself that I consider biking 5 miles a day to be “aggressive cardio” but I guess that’s where I’m at right now.

Another aspect of my routing that fell apart was my daily gratitudes. When I watched the talk of the man with the high eyebrows I was dubious of his claims regarding positivity practices like daily gratitudes. Returning to this practice, I’m back to believing him. It makes a difference to write positive things down. Writing helps me wire my brain to be more positive.

I think the abandonment of anchor routines contributes to my spiraling towards burnout. I haven’t yet figured out how to maintain my anchor routines with the fluctuating schedule of temp work.

On that front, I interviewed (through the temp company) for a longer-term employment. The gig, if I get it, will last 6 weeks. It’s a sales position but it’s within the context of green tech utilities. I feel like the interview went really well so I hope I can do that job. Having consistency in routine for 6 weeks would be awesome.

Recently I did not advance in an application process because the hiring manager felt I was overqualified and he was afraid I would jump ship for something closer to my skill set. The same week I got a rejection because I wasn’t experienced enough to qualify for the position. It is very confusing to get this feedback because neither position points to something I am qualified to do.

Writing this post has been really challenging, but now I’m in my favorite Starbucks and they are playing the music of my youth so I am finally in a place to write.

Healing practices:

Hiking

A couple weekends ago I used the serendipitous magic of Facebook to go on a hike. I posted that I would like to go on a hike that day, and which park I wanted to hike in. Someone responded and we went to that park and hiked. It was marvelous. This friend, henceforth called SassyPants, is someone who has been on the outskirts of my social circles for a bit but we haven’t spent much 1:1 time before. It was great; we did a comfortable 7 mile hike with plenty of mud and even some waterfalls!

I like going for mud hikes after a rain, I like seeing all the cool erosion that happens and the mushrooms that grow all over the place.

It felt good to be outside in the quiet. SassyPants talked briefly about hiking really tall mountains but we agreed that it’s not as fun to hike above the tree line. I said “Well that makes sense. Trees are friends. You don’t want to go hiking without your friends.” It wasn’t until we were in the sound-dimming forest that I realized how much I missed the quiet. When I was an undergrad, I went out all the time. Since my traumatic backpacking experiences with my brother I’ve had a really hard time getting myself to go hiking often. It felt really nice to find a hiking buddy who didn’t push me too hard but got me out nonetheless.

Networking/ meeting people in person

One of the things contributing to my feeling burnt out about unemployment is the sheer quantity of energy I feel like I need to expend, all the time, in applying to jobs. The past couple weeks have slowed slightly but I have continued to network. I found an event put on by a startup incubator and accelerator that is run by Big American University.  It felt much more comfortable than some of the other tech networking events I’ve attended. There is a component of familiarity that counteracts the extraverted energy needed in networking with complete strangers. With everyone in the space being an alum of my alma mater, there is an…almost familial affiliation that makes starting a conversation easier. The comfort and familiarity set the stage for me asking strangers to introduce me to more strangers and have coffee meetings.

Contrastingly, many of the networking events I’ve been to are attended by techies who don’t much care if they have anything in common with me. And in general they don’t have anything in common with me. PartnerPenguin, who has been in the tech scene for much longer than me, delights in the many ways one can invent one’s self when networking with strangers. I don’t much care for lying, I’m not much good at it so I definitely don’t do that in those settings. However more exhausting and difficult is framing who I am, what I “do” and what I’m looking for in a way that others will find me interesting enough to hire.

One of the personal things I’ve been grappling with is that I recently identified that I need practice code switching because I’m currently no good at it. It’s a skill and skills can be learned. But if anyone has resources, please pass them along.

Compassionate lectures by mentors

I think one thing I, and other Millenials, struggle with is the use of social media. Personally, I use Facebook a lot. I have great things happen by use of the medium, like random hikes, tickets to see my favorite artists, being able to follow and reconnect with my friends from all parts of my life. I am aware of their past (past tense tentative) emotional manipulation tactics and feel like I try to stay informed on best practices on how not to get depressed using the platform. Even still, at this point in my life, I feel Facebook is the most direct way of knowing the sheer volume of people I have in my life.

I struggle with what to post of my life and how to interact with commentary. Recently I have posted a couple things that have incited a lot of commentary. Like, on the order of over 80 comments. It has been a new kind of exercise in emotional labor to react to the comments. I have tried to maintain an inclusive environment and foster legitimately respectful conversation between sides that don’t agree. And that’s been exhausting.

But I also struggle (as I know other friends my age do) to avoid across as petulant. Recently I kinda pushed the limits of proper self-censorship when I feel bad compared to sharing that I feel bad. I was really sad on the “Day Without Women” because I wasn’t sure how that related to me. I posted something to that effect on Facebook.

A newer mentor of mine reached out and asked if we could get coffee. I appreciate that everything involved in the interaction was based out of a place of compassion and genuine caring for my wellbeing. That being said, it was a lecture about framing and output. She recommended I watch The Godfather and put forth her own experience about having to pivot within her career.

This was actually the second of such compassionate lectures that a mentor of mine has done recently. I view it as an immense privilege that I finally have strong mentors in my life who are so invested in my productive future that they will intercede when I’m doing stupid shit. Well, give myself credit. Doing things that I don’t know are unacceptable in a professional setting. Folks who are invested and able to share their life experience in such a way that it builds me up.

I feel like this is particularly worth noting in the context of my coming from the scientific community. I have found that “mentors” I was assigned at TLoTH or at Big American University were, in retrospect, really bad at mentoring. My expectations around what a mentor does and how they feel about me are changing. Previously folks with the title “mentor” have not particularly liked me as a person. They frequently acted in a selfish manner and I often felt used, like a pawn. People I’ve looked up to in this capacity have stolen my research or just not given me proper credit. In one case, a person who I’d hoped to be a mentor told me that, “no one [I worked with] liked or trusted me.”

So it is a big deal that I have finally found mentors who are actually in my corner. Mentors who hold my success as a central component to our relationship. Mentors who let me know the (unforeseen by me) consequences of my actions before I do them. This is a big deal. And I appreciate it.

Co-working

A strategy that continues to work for me for coping with being unemployed is co-working. Inviting friends over to work at my place continues to be a challenge for confronting internalized “you may not have people in your space unless it’s pristine.” Anyone who knows me now may be surprised to learn that growing up I was not really allowed to have friends over. My grandmother lived in the front room of my house and my mother was very overwhelmed by being the caretaker of small children and an elderly, handicapped parent that housework was often not a reasonable option for her.

This grew into an unending situation of clutter so that it quickly became a point of shame to have guests in the house. I was small and did not understand this at the time, I just know I was supposed to go over my friends houses because their houses were generally cleaner. Except the one time a friend had rabbits. Rabbits weird me the hell out and their poop was everywhere. I don’t think that lasted very long though.

Anyway, in my adult life I have confronted this childhood issue in a very aggressive way. I strive to keep my apartment tidy, verging on clean. I invite people over and don’t let the status of cleanliness be a determining factor of whether they come. If they want to see me, they come. Lately this has been more successful than I’ve ever anticipated. Friends have come, and even brought their significant others. I like that I am the kind of person who my friends want to introduce to their significant others. And I like that they feel comfortable doing so in our home.

Crafting

The biggest solace I’ve found for rejuvenation in the past couple weeks has been crafting. I make little tiki dudes like this one:

I make bracelets and stuff like that too. I am working on a banner that will say “Subtle like a land mine” but that’s taken a backseat for a bit. It’s really surprising to me, but people have actually been buying my merchandise. I’m working on a bi-pride themed watch band right now, but I futzed around with the colors first so now I have a mostly finished bi-pride themed bracelet. Would anyone on this newsletter like it? I’m asking $40 unless I have to add a lot to the length for it to fit.

I like that crafting can be done while I’m talking to people. I find that it’s somewhat easier for me to pay attention to information, in some ways, when my hands are busy. I know when I took Physics I retained information better when I was sewing. I’ll probably need to alternate what type of crafting I do over time because the constant knotting is making my forearms sore and I don’t want a stress injury.

Music

As always, which I think I convey pretty clearly in this blog, I deal with a lot of my emotions with music. I both make and consume it, pretty much every minute I’m awake. Lately I have been listening to the second half of Hamilton to cry if I’ve needed to cry. I can’t wait to see the play because I’ve heard that Eliza (at least original cast Phillipa Soo) screams before she drops into Burn.

On that note, I’ll leave you with this AMAZEBALLS video and song. I have been low-key obsessed with it for some time and it’s just great. I hope you watch this video many times as I have.