Category Archives: Career

Career, Career Change

Life update and what’s ahead for 2025

Leave a comment

My youngest cousin just posted that she was promoted to VP and while I am, of course, happy for her, I can’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy mixed with some serious sadness about my own non-existent career at 41. She’s in a different field, but she’s 30 and sprinting ahead towards what I’m sure will be even more success and I’m… I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m not even crawling in my career right now. It’s more like I’m stuck in quicksand.

Do I have a job right now? No. Managed to grow the net worth through 2024 thanks to the markets moving up and up some more, but that isn’t going to be forever. Money is important but at this point I just want to feel proud of what I’ve done and I don’t. I can’t get a job. I can’t get a good job and I can’t even get a not-so-great one. I thought maybe grad school, but then I realized that doesn’t make any sense… why throw money at my problem when I need that money to keep growing, and I’m the problem.

So… what do I do? I ended up having my disability extended for depression, which has been helpful given it softens the bleeding for a bit, but that’s ending in three months. I may be eligible for $1800 a month in unemployment for a while, but that doesn’t exactly pay the bills. Part of me wants to just wait until my daughter is one, and then, it’s basically summer and that same part wants to wait until the end of summer to get a job… the other part of me is freaking out thinking I should get something NOW.

Weird convo today with my now-aware-of-things 6 year old in the car, where I mentioned I was getting a new job in 2025, and he asked about the job I already had, which I had to inform him is no longer a job I have without saying “mom got fired.” Why am I not working there? I didn’t agree with what they wanted me to do. Well, that’s part of it. “Mom saved a lot of money in her 20s so you don’t have to worry we will be fine, I just want a new job so we can go on nicer trips and get better presents.” Sort of the truth. Sort of.

Right now I just want a career path. I want a promotion. I’ve never really had a promotion. I want to do a good job and go from IC to manager to director to VP. I’ve been “director” level for 15 years in most roles and only once had direct reports. I don’t know if I care about having a team, but I do just want to be good at what I do. Good enough that someone says “promote that woman.” Now, I know that person saying “promote that woman” will be 10+ years younger than I am and the longer it takes, the worse that will get. Not that I think younger people are not worthy of being my manager and my manager’s manager and so on… I just feel… old… and like such a massive failure.

I have been applying to jobs here and there. I’ve been through a few interview rounds, even make it to the final rounds with two companies. One, well, the hiring manager was fired about a week after I didn’t get the job. The other was weird and I’m glad I didn’t get it, I would have failed there. They were all over the place, basically asking me when I could start then… ghosting me. The hiring manager there didn’t think I’d be able to handle startup life as a mom with a young baby which… was not cool for him to say… but also, given I know what startup life is… is probably true.

Bullets dodged?

I’ve never aspired to… do anything in my career, really. It just happened. I just kept doing things. Whatever I was asked to do. Sometimes logical things. Sometimes things that made me roll my eyes or question the meaning of life. But things happened. When I had the energy. When I wasn’t 41 years old with 3 young kids, two of whom are on the spectrum, and all of whom need my attention 24/7.

I’ve felt better the last month or so because I decided to stop thinking about work entirely. Outside of a small side project I have that gives me a little needed reminder that I’m capable of working, even in small amounts. Maybe I can get a job. But what kind of job? Will it be a dead-end, will-never-ever-ever-get-promoted job? Does that even matter?

VP. I’ll never be a VP. I don’t care. I guess. I just want to do something… good… for once. I’m scared and sad and what’s new, but hey, my net worth is $3.6M, so that’s something.

Career

Do something meaningful or just make money or FIRE

2 Comments

I’m not sure what I want to do with my life, but it feels as if I’m running out of time to do it, whatever “IT” is. I always felt like in order for life to be worth living, you need to do something worth doing. But then I also acknowledge that life is fleeting no matter what, and even the most accomplished of individuals are forgotten, if not in generations, than at some point the the sun dies and humanity disappears forever. It’s a bleak way of looking at things, but it also is freeing. Nothing I do matters from that perspective. Nothing at all.

What does matter, at the moment, is paying the bills. Giving my kids a good life for the few years they get to live when it does feel like life has meaning. Giving my family a life that I can look back on, on my deathbed, and think, I gave them all a good life. We had fun. We laughed. We spent quality time together. We saw the world as much as we wanted to. We ate good food that we made or bought. We had some memorable experiences. My kids are well-adjusted, as much as possible with our DNA, and we’ve been generally good people.

How much money does THAT cost?

Well, right now we’re spending anywhere from $12k-$15k a month, and it doesn’t get us that lifestyle. Not here. Not in the Bay Area. We can have some of it. I’m getting better at learning the basics of cooking (taco night FTW) and honing in on managing my Amazon addiction.

But everything adds up.

New tires.

Special doctor’s appointments for my autistic kiddos, now with a $50 co-pay per appointment on my $1200 a month already-subsidized Obamacare plan.

What’s happening with the plant outside?

We should check on the house insulation as our PG&E bill is $600 a month.

Our car is on its last legs. We can manage with just the minivan for a while, but then we’ll have some uber costs to take us places and can’t take the kids two places at once.

My mom on the east coast is only getting older, and eventually she won’t be able to fly out here to see us. It kills to think about not seeing my mom at least two times a year, even though she drives me nutso. Family is family.

The kid’s school is having a fundraiser, again.

And so on.

Life is just expensive. People clearly manage on less. A lot less. Even in this insanely expensive part of the country.

But — to life the life I want — we need to earn. I need a job.

We can maneuver our savings and investments as such that I probably don’t have to earn a crazy amount to be CoastFI at least. That’s nice to know. It’s incredible to have a serious cushion at this point in my life. I’m not sure how I got here, but I did. I still remember saving my first 50k, 100k, 250k, etc, and thinking — wow, that’s a lot of money. So it’s all relative. I’m in a good place. We’re in a good place. But I can’t not work. Not here anyway. And as my husband refuses to move (and I don’t really want to) I need to figure it out.

He makes $110k a year with no benefits. We’re bleeding anywhere from $50k-$100k or more a year with his income alone. My goal is to make $150k a year minimum.

The job market is shit right now. Add to that my wonky employment history and not clearly fitting in any one position I’m a bit scared.

I’ve applied to 300 jobs, give or take. I have some interviews here and there, but nothing is sticking. This week I have two first round interviews, one second round, and one second round that appears to be a final round because it’s five hours(!) long. Remote at least. It’s good I don’t have a job because who has time to find a job when they do?

I know, I know, I’ve been daydreaming of a career change. I’m not against that either. Just scared. I’ve been starting to learn some very preliminary coding. Ok, I watched a few YouTube videos and have been conversing with ChatGPT about where I should start and my 6 year old son knows more Python than I do. I have a few app ideas, but haven’t jumped in yet. It’s difficult to focus with ADHD and 3 kids including a 3-mo old who needs to nurse every 3 hours or so. My brain is a big pile of mush. And I’m supposed to work full-time again, how?

The jobs I’m interviewing for are all over the map. I had a call for one that paid $80k-$100k. That was a horrible interview and they decided I wasn’t worth following up with to even tell me they passed on me, I guess. Most of the roles are senior IC or head of the small department and paying $180k-$200k. A few are $120k-$150 IC or some are head of in small startups where they think that range is acceptable. Then others at bigger companies are higher than $200k but odds of getting those are teeny tiny non existent (though there is one I’m applying to that seems like a possible good fit, so fingers crossed there.)

It’s just… I wish I could have a job that inspired me to do my best work… I feel like I need that. Something I wake up in the morning and I’m all like, wow, I get to do THIS with my life? But is that realistic? How many people actually get that kind of life?

The reality is that I have 25 years or so left to work. Which is a long time but it’s also not that long of a time. If I stay in a job 4 years, that’s 6 jobs or so between now and retirement. Six opportunities to do something meaningful or to just hold my breath and pay the bills. And if I do FIRE, then even less time. How much do I need to care? What if I just find a job I can do blindfolded with my hands tied? Why does it HAVE to be hard OR meaningful?

I just want to feel like I can do the job. Even if I can convince these folks that I can in the interviews (I doubt it), when I start working how do I actually do a good job? I never know where to start. If someone hands me a project I’ll get it done to the best of my ability, but these roles are all so much more ambiguous. Which, tbh, I like — as I get to be more creative and strategic — but then I just have trouble actually figuring out what’s worth doing. I see the big picture and all the things we should be doing, but of course there aren’t enough resources to get that done (esp when the only resource is me). And, so, I flop. When I have an agency or team to do the actual work and I can set the strategy it’s better. But I always run out of time. Some due to procrastination and panic, some due to overcommitting, some do to righting the course too late.

I really don’t know what to do. I know what not to do. What not to do is don’t get fired again.  I mean, I can’t avoid layoffs — which are more common than not these days. But I can’t get FIRED. So I need to figure out how to do things right from day one. Which includes during the interviews because that’s when I actually provide an overview of my plan for the first 90 days usually. I need alignment where I’m not overselling myself to get the job but also getting the resources I need to make a big difference fast. I made it 4 months in my last role and that’s because my first 90 days I didn’t get enough done. I would have handled things differently if I could do that all over again, but no matter what I think it wasn’t a fit.

I’m really struggling and scared. I know I’m not going to be on the street tomorrow. But I just don’t know what I’m good at. And I’m tired. And don’t have the energy to fight right now. I need a job that I can do and do well and earn ok money at and actually feel some sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Is that job out there? Is it one of the roles I’m interviewing for this week? Will I ever find it? And when I do… how da fuc do I keep it?

Career, Depression

Should I change my career at 40? I need a do over.

4 Comments

If you’ve been following this blog for the last — nearly 20 — years, you know I never exactly loved my career. While I struggle with depression and ADHD, I’ve managed to continue getting jobs after being let go over and over again… but the jobs I was able to get were the ONLY jobs I was offered at the time and I took what I could get. Am I lucky I got anything? Yes. Am I lucky those jobs sometimes paid a lot especially with a few solid years of stock being worth more than I ever imagined? 100% yes. But…

But.

I’m 40 and I have no employable skills. I’ve gotten by with a mix of getting lucky and having hiring mangers who had strong ideas of what they wanted and couldn’t find anyone else willing to execute on them. I have been a “yes” woman but never have built my own value in knowledge and abilities I can take from one organization to the next.

As I joined a “obviously going to be fired” zoom call last February, I no longer deluded myself into thinking the early morning meeting with my boss was going to be something else. I had flights booked for a series of conferences I was managing and my boss, over the weekend, told me to cancel my trip and meet him first thing Monday morning. I knew I deserved what was coming. I was lost, yet again, in a job that I couldn’t do. I didn’t know what to do. There were a bunch of things he wanted me to do but nothing came naturally to me and I spent too many hours spiraling over how I couldn’t do a good job. His constant berating me for the work I did do didn’t help.

If it was just that one job I’d say it’s a fluke — a bad boss — a bad environment — bad luck. But this is the story from day one of my career. And at 40 it’s no longer a little bit of imposter syndrome mixed with something I can learn. It’s obvious to me this isn’t going to improve in this field. I can maybe find the right combo of meds to help minimize my anxiety and help me focus — but even then — I’m not able to do this job at any company. Reading and applying to job postings just makes me sick to my stomach.

I’m hopeful I can find a career where I don’t feel that way about work. Maybe I’ll never LOVE working, but I want a career that doesn’t make me borderline suicidal.

Part of me is excited about starting over. Going into this with a big enough cushion that I can give myself two years to redirect and will probably be ok. It’s scary to drain my savings down, but scarier to think about 25 more years living like this (if I can even manage to find another job in my field, which is looking less and less like by the day.)

I do carry shame that I’ve failed to get where I should be at this age. If I had only focused and built my career in my field I could daily b making $250k+ a year. I could be providing for my family consistently. I could be good at my job. I’m sure shit would happen sometimes and there’d be new things to learn, but I’d be one of those people who just knew what they’re doing and acted like it. I could/should be a VP at my age. Instead, I’m applying to junior level job and not even getting calls for interviews because my experience makes no sense.

It really, really sucks.

And it’s an opportunity. To start over. Clean slate. Is that possible at 40? How am I 40? 40 with a newborn and two other kids under 5. I’m tired. And want to be a good mom too. Struggling to do a little work and also the mom thing. So how could I go back to school? I feel pretty lost right now. There are options — so many options — but which path to take? I’m scared to invest in myself. Scared to throw money at a problem when that problem is me.

I don’t know what choice I have, though. At some point the money will run out. My husband refuses to get a full time job until the kids are all in school full time, and even his full time income would not cover our expenses. I need to get it together. I have health insurance covered through the end of August and then need to either pay for COBRA or get insurance on the marketplace. It’s so expensive. Life is crazy expensive. I refuse to lose everything I’ve built over the last 20 years. The only question is — how?

Career

Update on Life These Days

3 Comments

I haven’t been in the mood to write a lot lately. Was just thinking about this blog and my readers as I work through my budget for the year.

The sort of everything is that it took me three months to find a new job. I got lucky — because a lot of interviews were getting to late stage (including projects I put a lot into) and then I didn’t get the job for one reason or another. One I thought I would get was eliminated as the company went in another strategic direction. A contact of mine from the past referred me to an opportunity and the interview process was very smooth as she is super well respected in the org, so I didn’t even have to do a project to get hired!

The role is much more junior than my past roles and on paper it’s a lot less than I was making at my last job (for even more work). I’m enjoying the role, though. It’s hard but I’m learning a lot and I feel appreciated for what I bring to the table. I realize the past years have felt like an abusive relationship with my past employer and I should have left a long time ago. I’m glad I didn’t because the comp was worth staying for — but it was definitely time to leave.

This job is very much a transitional role. I need to run with my new title and pick up as much experience and data for my resume as I can in the next 1-2 years. I’m at $175k salary now with no bonus or anything (plus minimal private co stock that won’t be worth anything.) It’s not horrible but going from $250k+ to $175k is pretty rough on the ego and home budget front. My husband is earning $100k so we can get by on $275k but it’s tight (yeay HCOL.) I need to spend some time reallocating investments as things are way off now. I’m tired and don’t have time to think about it. Plus I need to help my mother with her investments as she sold her house and it’s all in cash now. Fun times.

ADHD, Adulting, Career

Never Gonna Get Laid Off, Never Gonna Turn Around and Desert You…

10 Comments

Weellllllllllllp. Layoffs have hit my sector bigly and I’ve had an axe hanging over my head by a thread for a long while now with my boss salivating at the chance to slice the string. I know, though I don’t know, but I know, and everyone at the company knows, because it’s pretty obvious when such things are going down, that I have a job for mayyyybe two to three more weeks. Then — (f)unemployment? Ugh, if only I could take a chill pill and lean into the “fun” part of that, you know?

Here’s the deal… I never was a fit for this job, or any job I’ve had. I’ve gotten by on producing shiny objects — tricking people into thinking I can actually do a job. I’m not a one-trick pony, mind you — I have a whole host of magic up my sleeves. Problem is, I got short arms, and I run out of tricks soon enough. Then everyone realizes I’m a total fraud.

Oh, before you start throwing “imposter syndrome” at me let me tell you that I am convinced most everyone is a fraud, their brains are just not trying to solve every single problem in the universe at once so they can slow down and focus on whatever it is they are doing at the moment and get it done and move on to the next thing. My anxious-as-fuck brain freezes up all while jolting around seeing ALL OF THE POSSIBILITY. And then, when I’m working on creative projects — which is most of my work — I don’t know how to give useful feedback as I nit pick to sculpt the project until I’m happy with it. I don’t actually know what the end result is until I see it, and that’s not the way one can work in the corp world. Everything is all frameworks this and Simon Sinek that. Yea, I came up with a blog business idea earlier that while on unemployment this winter I’m going to read every single “top” business book that my colleagues quote to quote-zoo to sound smart and I’m going to summarize them for people like me who have no attention span and create quizzes so we can all remember the important bits to sound like we know our shit.

After I get through my little project, I’ll be seeing stars and going to interviews quoting all of the visionary visionaries, nodding along as yet another CEO references yet another book that everyone in business obviously has read, duh, even though I haven’t, oops. Even if my name isn’t as alliterative or sepia-toned colorful as as 

I’m glad I’m getting let go. Really. Not really. Kind of. I should have left this job a long time ago. Let me say I am glad I didn’t. I’m so fucking lucky. Soooooo lucky. The amount of income I made the last two years is abso-fucking-lootely ridiculous. It’s unlikely I’ll ever see that kind of AGI on my annual tax return again, ever. Unless this blog blows up bigly and I get a book contract that goes top 10 NY Times bestseller list and my face magically appears in all of the airport bookstands next to all those other books someone must buy waiting for their flight because why else would they put them there?

So if you haven’t noticed I’m flipping out a wee little lot bit and terrified of what happens next. I’ve managed to land a series of interviews for a series of companies and they’ve all gone nowhere. I fucking HATE feeling like I have to fake it in interviews to get a job — both because I don’t like faking anything (TMI never faked it, that it, thank you much, yes I know you were wondering and wonderers cannot be left hanging in these parts) and also because that is just a recipe for disaster if I get hired under some pretense and then have to actually do the job. I just want to be able to be myself (well at least 80% of myself, I can leave  20% of myself  in the  NFT car in the virtual parking lot) and get hired for who I am and what I bring to the table. Ah, such wishful thinking. Who would hire that? Who would hire ME? I wouldn’t. That’s a problem.

I’ve got a whole host of ideas on what to do next. Because I need a job. One that pays well. I haven’t made less than $165k in over 7 years. And I’m looking at jobs that pay $100k-$125k. And I can’t even get those. I’m considering a year or two of a low-paid job to build up some specialist experience but still I have to get the job and do a good job at it and that all leads me to that I need an MBA and to get an MBA I need to learn math and take the GMAT and I’m going to be 40 in a year and it’s too late for all of this, I’m just fucked beyond fucked. I do figure that there are certain things I can improve — skills I can learn — and other things that are harder to get better at. Creativity seems hard to optimize. I can beg borrow and steal ideas but I’m never going to be some sort of creative genius. I can, however, perhaps, learn data science. So I’m shifting to trying to find a path that’s learnable. Real. Hard. Skills. Ones that pay well, ideally. Or I just start this business book blog and start interviewing business people and make a podcast and make myself a person that people quote. Yea, my dream job is being paid $250k to speak at a conference for an hour. Who’s hiring?

,

Career, Career Change

Struggling and Scared. What’s New?

2 Comments

I have 70 days until I will feel good about leaving my current job. But that still leaves the big question – what job should I go to next?

Reading job postings is the most depressing thing ever. I don’t have any skills that would land me a new job. And the jobs I’m qualified for, well, they aren’t even clear fits, and they would pay A LOT less. My only hope for making the same income is to take a VP level role, which is possible since I think I can probably convince some company no one wants to work at to hire me to run a department… I’ve done it before… but that means I actually can’t suck at this time. And while I think I’d be better than I was in my early 30s, I don’t see myself really being able to do the job well.

I keep having this sinking feeling that I’m stuck. That isn’t worst case, of course. That means I continue to do a good enough job where I don’t get fired. For however long I need to do that. I’m just not getting any more relevant experience for leaving and the longer I stay the more stuck I become. Until I get so depressed that I can’t function and end up losing my job anyway.

But I feel like I need to dig into something meaningful as my next step. I’m scared because part of me likes not giving a shit about my job beyond just doing a good enough job. If I am doing something that actually betters the world then I will be extra angry at myself when I slip up. It feels good to not care, I guess, but then I can’t motivate myself to do good work, so I think I need to care overall.

I wonder if I took some time off would I have the energy to get back to things. But I’m still convinced I don’t have the ability to learn enough skills to be employable in any job that a sane person would want to have. My number one skill is managing to make crazy sociopaths happy by doing what they want even though I disagree with it entirely. It’s not the best life though, at least for the past few years, it has paid well. But this year it’s leaning into being asked to do things that I’m not ethically ok with plus I don’t believe in and I just hate it all.

I’m curious what I’ll get for my bonus and raise (if any) this year. If I don’t get a raise again that’s going to hurt because inflation is bonkers. But I’m, well, not putting any money on a potential raise. I know even 5% is going to be pretty standard this year and anything below that is just a kick in the face and a clear sign to GTFO. But where do I go? I really don’t know. I’m just so worn down. I’m taking it week by week. 10 weeks left. Just 10 weeks. I can at least get through the 10 weeks right?

Career

Objectives Towards a Better Reality

Leave a comment

My “work husband” jokes that I ought to just say “loop” every time I text him how frustrated I am and that I need to get a new job. He often texts me similar sentiments in return so we put up with each other’s recurrent complaints, and both share the same frustration with the many things that don’t make sense with constantly-changing goals and lack of opportunity to focus on doing anything meaningful beyond the creation of a quick shiny object before moving on to the next. So, here I am, loop.

But leaving this job is no longer a question of if, but when. It’s more — what do I do next? I recently retook a Myers Brigs type test and I tested clearly as an INTP (no longer an INFP.) That tells me I’m fed up with bullshit and more appreciative of fact and logic in my old age. What a curmudgeon I’ve become. And I like it that way.

I feel like I have two paths here — one where I continue on my “business side” road, where I’ll never be a fit. I’ll have a few wins here and there because I can use logic to come up with ideas that make sense — but they will frequently be sabotaged by people who communicate better than I do and who think they know better. So everything I do will be some watered down or altered or not at all what it was supposed to be version of what I wanted to do. Even though for the most part I don’t even like what I want to do because I can’t get to it in a rational manner. I keep asking — WHY THE FUCK ARE WE DOING THIS — and if I can’t solve for that then it’s hard for me to do anything at all.

And in all my queries over the years I keep looping back to that I need to KNOW things. Not just any things. But I need skills. I need to understand programming. Not that I would be a programmer. Maybe I would be. I doubt it. But I need to understand how things work. To better communicate with the people who make things. So I can also make things. Even if I’m not, well, making them myself. This opens up paths to product management, data science, UX in collaboration with developers, and other roles that I could see being fulfilling in allowing me to build things and doing things that make sense.

The only problem is my focus is non existent. I’ve tried to go down this path before, and I don’t get very far. It’s not even frustration as I just feel like I have no ability to commit to anything whatsoever. It’s a problem. But here in my old age I know I need to. And I have this luxury of time that I normally don’t have where I could, if I get my darned act together, set aside some hours in the day to take a self-paced course and learn some things. I have a lot to do for work, but given I have a goal to move on soon, I don’t have to do anything above and beyond for my current job. And there are definitely times when I have downtime so I might as well put those to learning something useful.

I really like the idea that to get anything done in life you have to make a list of the 25 (or in my case 200) things you want to do and then pick the top 3-5 and cross out all the others. I haven’t quite made the list, but I’d say at the top of it would be 1. learn the fundamentals of coding (probs python since that seems to pop up everywhere) 2. build something even if it sucks 3. clean my house (/get a kitchen table set.) 4. exercise 4x a week 30 minutes a day and don’t order takeout; 5. prioritize work to-dos by day over the next 12 weeks and get that shit done (and repeat as needed.)

I think this is a reasonable and healthful list where if I can accomplish these things by the end of 2022, ongoing, I’ll be in a MUCH better place going into 2023.

I imagine applying for jobs would look much differently if I can say I completed a certificate for programming and/or built something. Because there are two types of people in the world, people who build and the people who try to make everyone see the value in what has been built. Ok, then also people who don’t want anything to do with building things and just want to make sure everyone is doing ok in the process of building those things. So maybe three types. I’m 100% a builder. I need to figure out how to be where I’m meant to be. I have 20-30 years of work left, which isn’t much time, but it’s quite enough time to either go batshit crazy or to be part of building something meaningful that I can be proud of.  I prefer the latter.

Career

The Roads You Didn’t Take

Leave a comment

There’s a part of me that still believes I have a big career in me. I could return to school for an executive MBA and find my voice and confidence to move up quickly on a high-potential path from junior executive to C-suite.

With my astute decision making leading to unprecedented revenue growth I’d no longer have to apply to jobs — jobs would apply to me. And 10 years later I’d look back at the last decade not as a smorgasbord of fake-it-till-you-make-it and no substantial work meriting pride but a full narrative around doing a whole bunch of great things. Maybe I’d be in one of those lists… despite no longer being young enough to make it into a 40 under 40. Perhaps a 50 under 50 but over 40. A 6 shy of 60. The one to watch. The one whose career is worth at least a couple of articles in respected trade publications.

Or – I quit the workforce entirely to write full time. A novel. A memoir. A TV series. A film or play or interactive art piece titled “pretentious” because it obviously is.  I create a storyline and cast and direct and edit something that goes on the internet and goes viral. Because everyone goes viral these days so why not me? I do something unique enough to capture some audience that wants more.

Or… I hand in my resignation and live off savings, moving to some town no one has heard of to live a life that won’t ever be heard of either. As a mom. Driving my kids to practices and classes and field trips. Volunteering at the school because there’s so much free time and I ought to use it doing something useful. 10 years of that.

Or none of these, more likely, just a schmuck doing some job half-ass not because I want to but because that’s all I’m genuinely capable of. Working for sociopathic leaders who at best are fake kind when you serve their visions well and at worst make you feel like shit until you land in a mental institution or die, whichever comes first.

There are so many roads and yet most of them seem so far away. Their starting point is a huge death defying leap across a chasm of diamond-tipped spikes just waiting to gut me alive. So I stay safely on the other side despite this wall behind me speeding up from a distance, clearly ready to nudge me off the ledge with no more space for a respectable momentum-building leap. So I wait until I fall violently to the end or I run and jump and try to make it across with my legs swirling at full speed in the air, like some long jumper who actually knows what the hell she’s doing — or perhaps not as gracefully but somehow I make it across, ready to take on the other side.

I don’t know and I’ll never know which is why I seem to just be waiting to be pushed off. Most people are here with me. Who says the other side is any better?

Career, Depression, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

Can’t Sleep When Things Are Going Well and Caving In

Leave a comment

$2.5M. I guess that is our current net worth, give or take, if you don’t count taxes or fees on sale of our house. I usually do but tonight I felt like giving myself a little fiscal pep talk so I threw together another spreadsheet (when I should be sleeping) which has us over the $2.5M mark. Even though that’s not real because if we sold our home and sold all our stock holdings taxes would make that a lot less. 

Still, the fact that in some not completely bullshit calculation we are at $2.5M is a significant milestone.

My husband and I picked one of those impossible net worth numbers we have/had to hit in order to consider a third child. $2.5M! That’s not going to happen, right?

Well… depends who is counting. But tonight, I’m counting it.

I’m not going to have a baby tomorrow. But given the savings goals been hit for each child ($500k, $1M, and $2.5M… if baby 3 is a possibility we’re at least at goal.) So that’s nice. None of the money feels real. And I know because I’m still rather heavy in tech stocks I’m going to regret that and it will come crashing down. I’m probably 30% in higher-risk stuff but I’m bored and antsy and FOMOing my life away so here I am holding way too. much FAANG and laughing about it until I’m crying about it. Oh well. When the game is squarely rigged against us — go big or go home? Or, stop taking risks because I’m almost old now? Probably that.

Money is a funny thing. $2.5M is a lot of money. No argument there. Yet I’m perusing the tuition rates for these fancy private schools for gifted kids and my jaw is dropping to the floor smack bang and flipping right back up into a cartoon spiral in reading that school for one kid for ONE year costs $35k or even $50k+. I mean. I don’t care how gifted your kid is. If your kids is that gifted give your kid $35k and have them build a business. Or a spaceship. Or a TikTok empire. I mean, if you are making $1M a year consistently forever then maybe $35k is a drop in the bucket but my bucket, rich as it may be, is snapping its lid on any thought of sending my son(s) to any sort of fancy private school.

I do wonder with my son… I have no idea if he’s gifted or just advanced or even how being also autistic and behind in some areas will make him who he is over the long run. I’m worried for him. Mostly in what happens when he starts to realize he doesn’t fit into the world around him. Right now he doesn’t care. At all. But I think as he matures he’ll realize that he’s different. I certainly know that feeling. My husband blossomed as the alien he is with a small group of smart-as-fuck weirdo friends. Well, maybe blossomed is the wrong word… but he survived and seemed to have fun along the way. I didn’t fare quite as well in my childhood and especially adolescent and early adult years.

And I wonder how much of what we’re capable of is based on the environment we’re put in and what we’re told we’re capable of and how we’re treated when we fail. It’s fucking strange to me to think some kids are shipped off to “gifted” programs where they walk around thinking they’re better than everyone else just because they can recognize patterns and a holographic memory (not a thing I made it up but I’ve decided it’s a thing.) I had some equally fucked up concept of my own intellect as a child based on my father’s commentary of both my smarts and my failure to live up to potential because I was clearly lazy and not trying hard enough when no no no I just couldn’t think straight and the anxiety took over very young when from an early age I felt like I was a misfit and was sad about bothering everyone while also longing so desperately to fit in and connect… but who was there to connect with? It’s not exactly all that different now.

So my son is clearly different and I want to support him while also letting him figure things out on his own. I always thought I’d be the mom who cheers my son on when he takes risks and fails but already I feel like I’m failing him on the failure support despite trying. He is already so anxious, so aware, so thoughtful in a mind that doesn’t yet understand the world or what is really going on. But he’s starting to. And I can tell as the world starts to make sense it becomes more and more scary. After a solid block of sleeping alone in his room in his bed he has been venturing out to sleep in our bed. And it’s sweet to cuddle and all but I can tell that his mind is spinning and processing all of it.

I haven’t told him my father is dead and he doesn’t know what death is yet but he certainly understands that my dad is missing out there somewhere. I don’t know what he thinks of him in his head. I worry for when my husband and my living parent’s pass away. I didn’t have to deal with grandparent death as a child except my mom’s father died when I was 8 and I guess he was always old and distant and it didn’t phase me much though I was a little sad at the thought of not knowing him well. And my great grandmother who was so old in her wheelchair through my young years – I don’t remember her dying but I remember her at some point being gone…

But because we are older parents and the ages are getting further and further apart between birth and the next birth there’s more death early on and it’s just something that is but it’s so terrible to have to experience it and to have to experience it with young kids. How on earth will I ever explain to my son when his best friend, who happens to be 78, no longer will be available to play with him ever again? My husband will be distraught and likely forever disabled emotionally by the loss of either of his parents. There are plenty of books on the subject but that doesn’t make it any easier.

And then there’s my own mortality. How did I get here? Well, covid. And my fear of getting a booster shot after the first 2 Pfizer shots seriously messed me up. I don’t know what was worse — how bad the shots messed with my body or how little doctors believed me (or how the doctors who did believe me said there was nothing they could do!) You start wondering if you’re crazy and just stuck in a placebo effect anti-panacea. Maybe your eye didn’t go blind and come back with dark floaters. Maybe you didn’t have the most intense headache like a monster clenching on your scalp and squeezing you to a pulp then stabbing you with ice picks for weeks. Maybe your hear didn’t shake like a motor and turn on and off when you were lying still at night. Maybe you haven’t had a series of experiences where your left arm and lip goes numb and you feel as if you’re possibly dying or stroking out or something.

But then you know all of that is real and you’re terrified of getting a booster shot when your body seems to be finally almost back to normal. The floaters have almost faded. You can go outside in sunlight and not cry because of your vision.

At the same time you know if you don’t get a shot you very well might die. You’re not being a hypochondriac or overdramatic. It’s just fact. You’re overweight now and that’s super high risk plus your depression is also a risk factor and you’re the blood type that seems to get hid hardest and now you’re over six months out from your last shot. Covid is an assassin out there looking for you and you can run by you can’t hide. So. I should get the shot. But then…  I don’t know. Months of feeling horrible again. Will I recover faster this time, or slower? What if I lose my vision entirely? Unlikely, but after my experience I don’t know what to think is possible anymore. And I’m so not an anti-vaxxer. I got my flu shot and I get it every year. I’ve had every shot in the book. But this really took me out. I’m scared. Of getting the shot and not getting the shot.

Meanwhile… life is being life. There’s been sickness in my house recently, a whole lot of it, but not covid. While my 3 year old seems invincible and has never had a fever (he was coughing a bit this week) my almost 1 year old was taken out by a fever up to 103.7. Poor kiddo. He’s still getting better. Slowly. And I’m trying to do my job that I’m so behind on. I managed to fight a billion fires today (a number of my own ADHD making) and I think there’s a chance I’ve caught up if I really put my head down and push through the next 3 months with tight project management kung fu fighting pow pow pow exhibitions.

But then…

My house is a mess.

My 3 year old son who is reading and memorizing the periodic table and yelling bloody murder at me if I count out of order ever and grabbing his ears should any unpleasant sound roll in or by needs support and therapies and doctors appointments and playdates and experiences and for me to be there and I’m not, I’m not there enough because even when I’m not working I’m so fucking tired or I am working because I can’t focus during the day and well it’s 2:30 now and hey I’m awake writing writing all the thoughts in my head then maybe I can sleep I guess possibly I don’ know. I want to be there for him. I want to sign him up for a thing or two but everything is expensive and yea I “have the money” but do I? I don’t know. If only I could be one of those people who just knew I’d always have a job — outside of mass layoffs — who had skills that were just employable like being a programmer or something but no I’m not that my skillset is pretty much straight up bullshit and while it’s not my first rodeo I’m still being thrown into a pit of mud and spiked in front of a crowd feigning concern. So.

And my younger son. What a personality. What a personality who needs attention and care and love and support. He is so focused and driven and will NOT GIVE UP if he puts his mind to something. I admire that in him though it makes it hard to hide anything from him because he remembers where you put it and he keeps trying to get it. We’re going to be in big trouble when he learns how to climb… he’s already starting to figure it out. I can’t believe he’s already almost 18 months (well , in 7 months) which is the beginning of when covid started with my first son and when I had the time to retreat from the world and go for walks with him that were first him sleeping while I pushed and later on more social walks for us as he counted all the numbers on the houses and shouted out letters as we walked by at 2.5.

Life goes really fucking fast. I mean they tell you it does. But you don’t know what that means until you’re in the thick of it. Here I am. Wading in quicksand and staring dewy-eyed at the sun, blinking to bat off the razor-blades of time.

And my mother needs to sell her house, hoarder house, but that’s another story. Or is it. Well it’s all my story. But who cares. I went out there and tried to help and apparently made more of a mess so she can’t handle it and she’s spending a fortune getting it cleaned up even though I got rid of so much she’s probably still saving money in the end. I can’t believe my mother is 68. Even though we have a bit of a jagged relationship I still don’t know how I can be in this world without her. Many of my friends wonder why I still talk to her. But I see her somewhat as my child as well. Not that I’m the best mother to her either. Mother to my mother. But I love her like a child, not like a mother, if that makes any sense. And if/when she dies it will likely feel like losing a child, and I’m worried about that pain, I’m worried I can’t handle more loss despite knowing loss is a gift of life because it means I’ve managed to keep on living. I’m scared of it all. I wish I could go back to the days when I knew nothing about the inevitable. I look at my sons and envy them and pity them. They can’t be kept in the dark forever. Especially with how fucked up the world is. Speaking of dark, things can get dark even faster. So much horrible things out there. I want to hide them from all of it. But they also need to know. I feel guilty for having kids sometimes. Even though grateful. Like what did I bring these innocent creatures into? Maybe they can do great things but — that’s if they survive it all. And then they still die in the end so that makes me feel pretty sick to be honest. Even if in the best case I’ll be long gone when that happens and they’ll have lived long lives and maybe had children of their own I still feel nauseous thinking about it. So I ought to stop because going down that rabbit hole is never a pretty one.

Anyway. It’s 2:39 and I need to sleep. I was probably going to write more things like about my new virtual therapist who is 83 who told me he can tell I’m highly intelligent and that I ought to be a professor and a columnist he named some columnist I reminded him of and I was supposed to know the reference but I didn’t because I don’t know much of anything but I’ll take the compliment with me to my grave or at least my mattress for now.

Career

Seven Recruiter Calls But I’m Not Interested

Leave a comment

The recruiter calls all go the same. Some company has some technology and then need someone on the business side to do XYZ for it. It’s a numbers game and at some point someone would believe I can fill the role they need (aka making magic) and I’d be hired. I’m told comp ranges $200k-$250k+, base. Don’t let that scare me away, they’re open to more for the right candidate.

The numbers are meaningless if I get hired and fired three months later, so I’m wary. After 15 minutes with a recruiter grilling me about my experience so hard I almost said clearly I’m not right for this role and hung up, she a second later said ‘you seem like a really good fit for this role’ (what?) and maybe I’ll speak with the founders soon. Ok. I don’t feel like I’m a good fit for the role, but a conversation can’t hurt…. or can it? Isn’t that what got me here, as in to this point in my career, in the first place?

I’ve said for a long time that this specific field I’m in isn’t right for me but it’s just so freaking clear I can see through it without noticing its there. It’s soul draining and yes it pays well especially in certain levels and companies but I just can’t do this anymore. I daydream of waking up excited about building something helpful in some way. But then again do I even have the energy for that.

I have the energy for nothing. Not even my typical long blog posts. Just this. A running log of where I’ll never be which is where I guess it is I am. Here. Still here. Always here.