This is officially (or unofficially?) week #6 of job hunting for me. It has certainly been rewarding in some ways; networking has led to my first professional experiences via freelancing, I am actively in the interview process with a company, and I am learning new technologies and concepts every day.
While these have proved to be rewarding, the search for a full-time position has also come with many challenges. The biggest one for me, I think, is not that it requires time and energy and work, but more so that it has consumed my day to day life.
I have become obsessive with checking my email, LinkedIn, and other job boards for open positions and responses from recruiters. I am spending all day either freelancing, sending outreach emails, or learning new technologies, and once the work day is over, I feel like I can only continue to think and talk about the job search process.
In my obsessive job searching, I have lost out on the things that I love to do the most: playing music, meditating, reading, watching arthouse, even just taking a walk outside or in a nearby park.
I almost forgot that I enjoyed doing all of these things!
While I have been practicing guitar at random intervals, I played bass for the first time in months, and it felt amazing! I had been holding on to so much stress that was alleviated within an hour of playing bass, nothing in particular, just having fun.
This past weekend, I learned a much needed lesson: **taking the time to do the things we love makes doing the things we need easy. **
“It Needs to be Perfect”
Another challenge that arose from my job searching is a sort of perfectionism, although, the more I think about it, the more it seems that it has always been a part of my work ethic, no matter what I was doing.
When discussing one of my blog posts with my career coach, she asked me if I had shared it yet on social media. I responded with no, saying that I was waiting to build a new blog site, or to move my blog to a new site like Medium, before sharing it; that way it would look the way I wanted it to, and I could feel better about sharing my posts via different social media channels.
She then told me about this “perfectionist” mindset, where one spends so much time trying to make something perfect, that it will never be finished. She told me that it was better to share something that may be “imperfect” rather than to share nothing at all.
Something about this really resonated with me.
I had heard about this complex before, but never considered it for myself. But then I really started thinking about it.
Throughout my time at FlatIron, I would spend extra time and resources when building out my projects. I wanted to exceed the minimum requirements, so that my portfolio could stand out, and so that I could thoroughly master the taught concepts.
While I am proud of my projects, I spent 10 hours a day building them, and went way past my set deadlines, pushing back my graduation; all just to make them “perfect”.
Then I thought about other aspects of my life, before I started studied software engineering.
As a music student in my undergraduate studies, I practiced a lot. To take a full day on my weekend and spend 10+ hours of it practicing my instrument was a normal routine for me.
Some of my peers were inspired by my work ethic…. and some were worried.
It reached a point where I would not see my friends for weeks outside of my classes just due to the fact that I was obsessed with my practice. If I had a piece of music that I was working on, or a tune I was shedding, or a solo that I was transcribing, I would not leave the practice room until I could play it “perfectly”.
The desired goal of all this practice was to be able to consider myself to be “good enough”, to be a “good” player. When someone told me they enjoyed my performance, or that I was “really good”, I wanted not only to believe them, but to agree!
Unfortunately, I set impossible standards for myself in this aspect, and I rarely ever agreed whole-heartedly. Either I missed a note or two, or did not play it perfectly, or something totally unrelated to my playing went wrong… a.k.a. it was not perfect, so I was not satisfied.
This extends to sharing my work online as well. In regards to sharing my blog posts, I have been hesitant to “put myself out there”, as it were. Similarly, I rarely shared videos of myself playing bass on social media; I never thought anything I would put out would be “good enough” for anyone to care, so I often refrained from it, to save myself the embarassment.
Conclusion
I have learned so much about myself throughout my job search these past few weeks.
I know that I have to allow myself to do the things that I love to do, so that I can put my best foot forward in what I need to do.
I know that I need to hold myself to impossible standards. There will always be a better way to do something, but I know that there is a best way for me to do something, and the only way to do it, is to simply do it!
I feel refreshed as I start a new week, and I will not soon forget these important lessons for myself.