So it's been awhile since my last post and I thought I'd explain why...since then I have had a full-time job and a slew of part-time jobs that did not turn out to be the final destination of my transition period that I thought it would...
Shortly after New Year's 2013 I landed a full-time job that, at first, I thought was the perfect situation for me. The role was in my hometown so I could continue living at home and save money for the future. Much to my happy surprise, as Central Connecticut is not a media hub by any stretch, the role involved skills and subjects (CRM, Sales, Sports Entertainment) that I was passionate about and the company had plenty of great benefits like free meals and professional development courses. What could go wrong? Being that I came in with a hungry can-do attitude, at first, nothing went wrong.
Meanwhile, I had accrued a number of unique part-time jobs along the way to this moment. So I was getting good experience on my resume, facing diverse challenges and my student loans were being paid on-time. Except that once my full-time job started I found that I was working seven days a week and often two jobs a day so after a few months I made the decision to resign from the part-time roles. I figured that the full-time job was my main priority and all I needed to traverse this next period of my career. What could go wrong?
Well fast-forward a year or so and the job did not work out due to various reasons. For a number of reasons, both personal and professional, the perfect situation I had found myself in required a special type of engagement to maintain. In other words, the job was mine to create not merely to have and the things that led to my departure were preventable, as they always are in hindsight. Same old story.
So what did I do next? Dust myself off and get back on the train of course. No room for losers in this house, not after all the adversity I had overcome from getting laid off the first time. Right off the bat I began researching jobs and filling out applications with the same dedication. While at times it was hard, the impulse to feel sorry for myself was outweighed by my desire to optimize. In this way, I could rationalize what occurred as something inevitable - rather than another grievous error on the road of success - I had just found the wrong role and next time I would know better.
While I did learn from the experience, just as I had a year prior in New York, this time there was no reason to feel like I had to rebuild from square. This time it was partially my fault for picking the wrong role and environment. Sitting at my desk in the first week of July 2013 I thought to myself: "soon I will start my next job and it will feel a thousand times more right," and "this time my insights and experience will make me more prepared than ever." Heck, it could almost be looked at as a good thing - a little course-correction from the wrong path. Time to move to a role in another city or make a good salary somewhere nearby and then build from there. What could go wrong?
Writing this six months later I can confidently say there was plenty I had yet to learn. Moreover, my transition period was about to get a lot tougher from a confidence standpoint. Because while this was different than the first time I was laid off - starting out in the biggest city in the world with nothing but my bootstraps - and it would be much harder to swallow. This time it was all about growing up.
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