There are so few times in life when you have your health and you’re neither in school or employed. For the lucky few who can afford a period of time out of work without a complete financial meltdown, this should be a time to stop, reflect, and even, god forbid, enjoy life for a minute or two. I really wish I could do that, but as always I’m a heaping ball of anxiety. I can’t just let go and allow life to roll me on its merry way, wherever that shall be. And all the anxiety is getting me sick, for I’m coming down with some kind of cold, because my body has finally let go and accepted its own weakness.
I don’t know how to interview right now. I have interviews — interview #5 with a larger startup and interview #2 with a smaller startup and interview #1 with a global firm. I’m a decent interviewer, but I always feel like I have to fib a bit to get the job. It’s not like huge lies — but someone may ask me if I know how to do something and I say sure and if they ask me to explain results from said thing I find some numbers that sound obtainable and throw those out there. How many leads did I generate per month? Oh, great question. What number do you want to hear that is actually something I might be able to deliver at this company, even though it’s in an entirely different market? Hmm. Even telling the truth can bite you in the ass — for at one company it might be much easier to deliver strong ROI than another. You just can’t win, but what you say at that interview, if you take the job, will haunt you forever.
And I don’t want to have to fib my way into an opportunity, or just accept the blind delusion of some CEOs who think I’m god’s gift to this field until they’ve hired me and see my limitations. I just wonder how people who do this for a living actually get good at it. Some of the job is just mindless repetition and detail work, which I’m intuitively horrible at. But there’s a lot of strategy and execution around that strategy as well. I mean, it’s not rocket science. Why do I suck so bad at it?
For starters — the field I’m in has a zillion / infinite things you can do at any given time. This confuses the shit out of my ADHD brain. I want to do EVERYTHING! So I start a whole lot of projects with the best intention. The few that do get finished are usually pretty good. Problem is, most don’t get finished, or at least not in time. Even when I try really hard to not do this I end up in the same hole, over and over again. If I were to take a job where I was assigned tasks I’d probably be ok with that if it required some level of creativity to solve the problem at hand, but not if those tasks were detail-oriented and repetitive. I know I’ve gotten so far in my career — to a $160k salary — by just saying the right things and trying my best until the anxiety just exhausts me and I can no longer think straight and I start making one careless mistake after the next.
Some of my commenters have suggested that I move somewhere with a lower cost of living. That’s certainly an option. But I have (some) friends here. And no matter how little money I have, driving down the freeway and seeing the beautiful rolling hills at sunset with the fog rapidly dancing over them is just – worth more than anything I could pay for. There are so many reasons why I love living here. I could move, but at the least the frequent sunny days and blue skies here keeps seasonal depression largely at bay — it was just so, so bad in other places I’ve lived. My fiance hates warm weather so there aren’t many places we can go that are sunny yet not so hot. I’d like to somehow stay here. I don’t know if I can.
I guess I’ll see if I end up getting offers for any of these jobs. I’m way too over qualified for roles in other fields that I’d like to pursue, and ironically the only way to switch into a job paying less than half of what I make now is to go back to school and spend about $150k-$200k for a master’s degree. Which is also an option. Right now, I just need to relax. I’ve been getting more and more upset about this entire last year and there’s just not point to that right now. What’s done is done. I have to just move on, and hopefully not too fast to the wrong thing, just because it’s there.
Hang in there and be patient although it’s not easy to see in the moment. I’d advise against the masters degree since I think you have plenty of valuable experience and your lost earnings while attending school and cost, vs. the money that could be made directly with your current education and experience.
Keep your head up and believe in yourself. Doesn’t matter what a weak boss thinks, although that might have you out of a job. He should have been more interested in building you up and helping you execute the role to his expectations rather than set you up for failure. You’ve been posting about it for a while so unfortunately it’s not a surprise.
I hope you end up in a situation that enables you to be successful. Keep applying and be confident!