Hey there!
I’ve had a wild couple of months since I last posted. I bought a house, moved into the city, gone on a few dates, and lost my job.
The last of those is currently my biggest issue. Mid-june, the company I worked for, and loved dearly, did a second reduction in force (RIF) and this time, I was part of that. So far, this has been a devastating experience. I don’t do well just sitting at home. I am a mover and a planner and a do-er and I need something to keep me motivated, otherwise I’ll go stir crazy, so I figured what better time to come back to my blog and start posting again?!
I’ve been keeping track of my job hunting journey on tiktok, but here I’ll sum up everything I’ve done so far. Here’s my job hunt journey:
On July 12th I was laid off and I immediately sprung into action. For those of you that are familiar with IFS, my protector parts were on high alert. For those of you unfamiliar with IFS, I highly recommend the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.
Anyways, on the 13th I got up, took myself to Barnes & Noble, and started applying for jobs and calling people in my network. Now, on July 2nd, I’ve applied for 164 jobs, I’ve gotten 44 rejection emails, and I’ve had 2 introductory calls. Both calls came from my network, not from the jobs I’ve applied for. And I’m feeling very discouraged.
I’ve put in a ton of work and I’m having a really hard time with the fact that I can’t just “brute-force” may way into a new job. The work I put in matters, but there is no limit to the amount of work it may take for me to get a job. I can’t just plan out steps 1-7 and boom, I’m hired. But I’d really like for the world to work that way.
So, since I am going absolutely stir crazy, and I keep catching myself deep in tiktok doom scrolling, I’ve decided to add some new habits to my daily life to keep me moving and focused on things.
Habits
When I first started talking to my friend about it, we were discussing a daily schedule instead of habits, but I hate schedules. I’m awful at sticking to them. They make me feel forced into something and stuck. I’ve always wanted a schedule to work for me, it just never has. So we listed out things I could be doing every day and then I decided that they would be better as daily habits I could check off.
The habits I decided to focus on are:
- Writing
- Reading
- Planning
- Doing one house task
- Spiritual Time
- Pushups
Writing and reading are pretty self explanatory, I am planning to do each for an hour each day. I’ll likely do the reading right before bedtime, to prevent night time doom scrolling, and the writing will likely happen at a different time every day.
For planning, I’ve had a few things on the back burner for a while that I intend to spend some time focusing on. First, I have always wanted to get a book traditionally published. I have a full novel written, so I can either spend the time doing some more editing or tracking down and submitting to agents that I am interested in working with. The other project is opening a food truck. I have spent a few years thinking about a food truck pretty abstractly and this is an opportunity to turn it into a fully fleshed out business plan and look for funding so that I can maybe make it a reality someday. The food truck would be called “The Pasta Truck” and would mostly focus on a build your own pasta bowl style of service. Here’s my current logo idea:
Doing one house task is also pretty self explanatory. I’m going to make a list of all the things I need to do in my house and try to tackle one per day. This will be simple and easily achievable things like “take out the trash” or “empty and load the dishwasher” so that I don’t get too overwhelmed. If that task is too big, I wont want to do it. But if I can accomplish it in 5 minutes or less, I’ll have 7 things done off my list every week!
As far as spirituality time goes, I’ve really been struggling for a few years now to figure out where I land spiritually, and I want to dedicate some time to figuring that out. I really don’t know what I believe, so I am going to dedicate an hour each day to sitting with myself and trying to figure that out. I want to build a spiritual practice into my daily life. I think this will include things like meditation, intention setting, praying, manifesting, and more.
And finally, push ups! I told my friend I am going to set a goal of being able to do 100 push-ups, and spend time each day working towards that goal. I can’t even do one right now, so this is going to be a real challenge for me. She suggested I start with wall pushups and I think that’s a great idea.
After I settled on what the habits would be, I hopped onto Canva, searched up a habit tracker, and dropped mine into this template.
Then I printed a copy and boom, now I’m ready to go for July!
I really hope I have a job by the end of the month, but in the meantime, this is what I’ll be working on. Wish me luck!
