016: The tough trek up
A reflection on the job hunt, or, how big ambition requires big endurance
Hello hello! I can’t believe it’s already the best month of the year 🤯
Apologies for the missed post last week (and the late post this week)—I’ve been working on an extensive New Zealand guide that I ultimately wasn’t going to finish this week, which I also didn’t finish last week. Instead of forcing my hand and rushing the guide, I’ll share about my latest update in my personal life: applying to jobs.
Posting consistently matters more to me than writing a lengthy piece, so this won’t happen too often again in the future. 😅
Written while eating red-braised pork belly—they make for such yummy leftovers. It’s one of my favorite Chinese dishes as a kid, and I’ve been so pleased to finally have made it for myself.
I read a beautiful piece the other day on the dangers of National Parks and the risks that come with any adventure. There’s a quote that stood out to me that I started reflecting on this week:
There is a reason why they call the Grand Canyon the Inverted Mountain, why there are signs at the top that read going down is optional, going up is mandatory.
Though the author is explaining the dangers of staying in the canyon base for too long, she makes a grander point that many folks—especially those with experience, like she—will disregard warning signs, believing they aren’t the target audience for such novice advice. For her, she overestimated how much heat her body could withstand, and lost energy while climbing back up the canyon wall. Her hubris bought her a slow, hazy death by heat stroke—until a chance encounter with a park ranger saved her life.
You can tell my anxiety’s at its peak when I start comparing my comfy city life to a near-death incident in the Grand Canyon. However, I still felt like she was speaking to me: Had I treated my sabbatical like a hike in the Grand Canyon? I had told everyone how excited I was for the “canyon,” and gotten to enjoy the beauty of its depths—but had I, like she, overestimated my ability to climb back up?
A hike is a good analogy for me, because I tend to also have low stamina in physical activity. I’m not a runner, but when I do, I have a moment about 5 minutes in where I think, Oh, yeah, this isn’t as fun as I thought it’d be. The initial adrenaline wears off, and I’m reminded that this is difficult. I probably don’t look too hot anymore. This hurts. I’m losing steam. I’m tired.
This month, I’ve been reflecting on endurance—in particular, the fear that I lack it. I feel this when at the end of a week, I’m exhausted from applying to jobs, from trying to serve a tiny slice of myself to various strangers facing a buffet of candidates to to choose from. Each action of putting myself out there—be it a message, text, interview, call, rejection—costs more energy than I had initially planned for. Perhaps it’s an aspect of growing older. Perhaps another aspect is realizing that failure doesn’t exist in many situations—there’s only pivoting: deciding that the fight isn’t worth it anymore, choosing to find a different path, hoping that we’ll find success in that new direction. When it comes to any type of difficult feat, how willing am I to push past my setbacks and continue fighting?
“Your skills don’t seem like a fit for this position,” recruiters write back. “But you’d be a great candidate for a senior finance role,” they’d add.
“You’re being picky and you’re applying to roles outside your finance background. Naturally, it’ll be harder to land,” well-meaning advice-givers would say.
Am I being obstinate by pushing forward anyway?
“Applying to jobs feels like dating,” Kristine said to me. She isn’t the first person to make this comparison.
I laughed at how true it was. While we were now commiserating applying to jobs together, we had spent most of our mid-20s commiserating dating. If there’s anything I learned from those years, it’s that most of the time, things don’t work out because of timing. Who they are in that moment isn’t what you need or want, and vice versa. Alternatively, you could be rejected for a plethora of reasons beyond your control: they forgot to take down their profile and weren’t looking, or had just decided to get more serious with someone else. I’ve been amused and simultaneously triggered as recruiters have gotten back to me with similar statements (including a “Whoops, we filled this position a month ago! We should have taken it down, sorry!”).
I actually really hated using dating apps because of how icky it felt to judge someone based on just a cursory sample of pictures and some witty lines (that female friends likely wrote for them?). At the same time, I felt exhausted trying to make them work for me. I tried to be genuine—I never ghosted anyone and told them the truth if I thought things wouldn’t work out, I treated each date with intentionality even if I was dating multiple people at the same time, I filled my schedule with exciting activities so that my romantic life wouldn’t be the only one I had. I stayed in relationships and situationships that didn’t feel right for too long, wondering if this was just part of love. Was I being too picky? Were my standards too high? Was it something wrong with me?
The Netflix hit Indian Matchmaking follows Indian singles as their families hire Sima Auntie (the matchmaker) to create “good matches” and teach them about relationships. Spoiler alert: While the show is entertaining, Sima Auntie is objectively bad at her job. Moreover, she chides women with too many preferences for their prospective partners—she’d quip back, “a full head of hair is sometimes too much to ask for.” (This never sat well with me, especially since she was willing to accommodate the men who wanted the Indian equivalent of Emma Watson.)
What stood out to me though was that the most attractive, have-it-all singles (thinking of Shital or Pradhyuman) didn’t just rely on Sima Auntie. Despite her telling them over and over that they’re too picky and need to change their personality to be more tolerant, etc., they were open-minded and creative in who and how they met, and kept putting themselves out there despite so many dates on the show not working out. Ultimately, they both found awesome matches outside of the show, and called in to tell Sima Auntie how happy they were that they didn’t give up.
James, in a similar way, is an ideal partner for me—and I don’t think I’d have been able to date him (er, grown my feelings beyond friendship) if I’d settled for a bad fit earlier or closed off my heart after giving up the search. I worked hard to get my emotional health to a state where I could support a healthy relationship, and had learned enough to detect and avoid red flags before we decided to date. Even now, we still work hard on our relationship—we refuse to give up on our problems and figure out how to overcome them together, be it his building a company or my figuring out my career and life.
The hard part about having ambitious goals is that you have to have the endurance to see them through. When I went on sabbatical, my goal was to find what I loved doing and to figure out a career that could facilitate that—and that I’d either have to build or find one at the tail of this break. Because I have a strong vision for my life, I’ll need to work harder to realize it. Right now, that looks like accepting the reality that finding a job that fits might take longer for me than what I’m comfortable with.
I’m also not doing this trek alone. Kristine and I support each other in our job search and sabbaticals (she and Janelle also literally supported me during our 5-day Inca trek in 2018). James, our families, friends, and readers(!) have been supporting me as well, and I’m thankful for everything.
Moreover, many of my close (and newer!) friends are also those who want to carve their own path, who want more than the 9-5, who are insistent on finding what freedom and truth look like for them. Some are even in the exact same boat—currently or thinking of going on sabbatical, actively applying to jobs, or fighting to create and build something meaningful.
Though I’m offer-less at the end of my first month of job hunting, I need to remind myself I’m just getting warmed up. Though the pain is starting to set in, I know the view at the end will be worth it. Until then, I’ll just need to keep pushing on.