A few weeks ago, I decided to get back into the job market. Well, saying “I decided” is a bit of a stretch. It just kind of began to happen and then all of a sudden I realized what was going on. I was late to my own party, it seemed, or slow on the uptake. (Would we say “slow on the upload” these days?)
With the closing of the wine shop, I was faced with a melange of emotions that all needed to be addressed. Mostly the emotion was fear, but that one emotion is packed dense with nuance and held up with a variety of fairly certain uncertainties of different heights, tensile strengths, and quality of material.
Picture this fear beast as a really big block of the densest and most stale loaf of pumpernickel bread. This unfortunate loaf is being “held up” (I hesitate to use the word “supported”) about a thousand feet off the ground (which is super high up for a person like me who has a fear of heights and falling) by sticks that have been stapled together, a line of used toothbrushes duct taped head to handle, quite a few unbent paperclips connected by wads of old chewing gum, and a very tall pile of cotton balls.
There’s so much to tackle to stabilize this thing.
Financial worries:
The business bank account is dwindling, which was the primary reason I made the decision to close the shop, but this is also the account I’ve been drawing from since I quit my life as a healthcare IT consultant last February. Since I quit that job, I’ve drawn about $1600 a month. Do the math. It’s not a lot. And not sustainable. If it weren’t for Clint, I’d be living in a shoebox.
I need to both create a business that will at least cover the new overhead of the creative studio I’m opening in June, but also I need an income to live on.
Social struggles:
Closing the wine shop after a year has been the most public failure I’ve ever experienced. And now I’m in the position to defend and explain this creative studio. Many people don’t seem to get it. I’m pretty sure I’m continuing to try to make my business ideas work in a place where I already know I don’t belong. But I feel like I need to at least try, which means I’m setting myself up for another public “failure” when I’ll have to finally close the doors. I’m not a defeatist. I’m a realist.
From the moment I opened the shop last year, I simultaneously lost connection with the people around me and gained a whole lot of socializing that was hard for me but probably good for me. That said, I need to be around people who I can engage with intellectually and creatively, just in small chunks of time. Important, though: I cannot be around no one or I get squirrely.
My age:
I’m 50. I don’t feel 50. I’d like to think I don’t look 50. Although, what the hell is 50 these days? My 50 is not my mom’s 50. Oh, but my mom started showing signs of dementia in her 50s, so that adds another layer of complexity to my loaf.
I need to stay active to stay sane and to avoid dementia, but have to work extra hard to do that here. That takes time out of my day, but it’s time I need to spend. As such, my daily schedule needs to have a routine but still be flexible.
My location:
I cannot stay in Petersburg for many of the reasons I’ve listed above, and more. Closing the wine shop released that tether, but I still need money to be able to leave if I need to.
And so, I started looking on Indeed and Zip Recruiter just to see what was out there. There are jobs. Some were intriguing. Some I thought I could do.
Clint texted me a link to an open position at the company his credit union uses for their core software. My experience and education truly ticked all the boxes. They even specifically said credit union knowledge was nice but not a necessity.
Long story short on that - Clint asked me to come with him to that company’s client conference which was conveniently happening in May. He reached out to the CEO emeritus. We had lunch at the conference (in San Diego), she liked my resume and told me to apply for the job. I did. I ended up attending the conference sessions. It brought back the old thrill of wearing slacks and lanyards. Well, not those things exactly, but the thrill of helping clients, digging into databases, and doing implementations. I met lots of people in the company and fell even more in love with their culture.
Yes! I not only can do this, I want to!
In my mind, all of the list of fears related to the shop and the closing of the shop were resolved, dissolved. There was no loaf. There were no more sticks and toothbrushes, paper clips and cotton balls. This job was so up my alley!
But then, the Monday after the conference, I received the system generated email telling me they weren’t going to further consider my resume. Harsh words, and a harsh, generic response considering I’d met high-up people in-person.
I emailed the CEO emeritus to thank her for her time and noted I was disappointed in the quick rejection. She said, “Hold on.”
An interview was scheduled for the following Tuesday.
(This story isn’t short, as it turns out…)
All week, I prepared, read up, studied, and practiced with ChatGPT. I blocked my morning on Tuesday so there was no way I would get a massage client.
At 1 PM my time, 10 AM their time, I joined a call with Taylor.
Two minutes into the conversation, he let me know the position had already been filled.
The following 28 minutes were spent trying to keep my smile and eyes from showing another round of deep disappointment.
He said he liked my resume and thought I’d be a good fit. He said he’d tell HR to keep my resume at the top of the stack if the position became available again.
I hung up from the call, and sobbed.
ChatGPT told me it was alright to be disappointed but reminded me that I wasn’t turned down because I wasn’t qualified or that they didn’t like me. The position had been filled. In fact, on the Monday of the rejection email, I noticed that the position had been taken down from their website. I knew, in my gut, that the position wasn’t going to happen, but I didn’t want to go into the interview with the mindset that I wasn’t going to get the job.
I may be clinically depressed right now and struggling to find a Buddhist level of foundational happiness, but I’m not a quitter. If there’s a mindset to be had, that’s it for right now.
I am not a quitter.
If I was a quitter, I would have decided to close the shop and keep the doors locked for good.
But, no. I’m also a masochist. The creative studio may not make the money it needs to pay for itself, but I’m going to try.
That job in the credit union world may not have panned out, but you know what, it re-sparked something in me.
Here are the facts:
I do not have a realistic retirement situation. No one taught me anything about it when I was younger. About ten years ago, I got myself a financial advisor, and at least got something started, but my retirement money will only cover a weekend in Cleveland. Actually, that joke is outdated. I’m in Virginia now. Getting to Cleveland is far more expensive. So, my retirement might pay for the gas to drive to Cleveland for the weekend.
As such, I need to expect to work for the rest of my life. That’s always been my assumption, but then I’ve always had a job. I’ve always had an income. I’ve always been financially independent. Until now.
To get back into the world of tech, I need to get back on the horse. That horse, however, has changed a LOT since I was really in the trenches.
A.I. is here. And it’s here to stay. Get on board or accept drowning as my fate.
I’ve been talking with ChatGPT for over a year. She helped me write the tags for my wine bottles, Essie’s job description, and all the documents ABC and the Health Department said I needed to have on hand (that they never looked at).
AI was the topic of conversation in a few circles. Claude (another GPT) came up. Curious, I started an account with Claude. That same day, he and I spent two hours fixing up my resume and buttoning up my LinkedIn. The very first thing he told me, though, was that I needed to stop using my old gmail account that isn’t very professional. Instead, he suggested I create one with my name. It took 2 minutes, he added it to my resume, and boom. I felt invigorated and excited to actually get that thing out there in the hands of potential employers.
Sure, I’ve got a wine shop, creative studio, yoga studio, Masters in creative writing, and massage therapy on my resume, but I can make a lot of cases that all of it pairs well with being a healthcare IT consultant, director of services and support at a healthcare IT company, and whatever other tech jobs I have listed.
In the past two weeks, I’ve gone through two AI courses through DeepLearning.AI and I started Google’s Data Analytics Certification program through Coursera. I’m also learning Python, a coding language. A lot of this stuff I’ve already done or already know because I’ve been somewhere in the tech world for more than half my life, but there’s a lot more to learn than there was before, and more ways to specialize.
Here’s one big difference between how I started out in the IT world and where we are today. The typical IT guy is a thing of the past. If you’re a slacks-wearing male still curled up around your knowledge of networks, virtual desktops, and database administration like a grouchy dragon who won’t share his gold, then you’re out of touch. If you’re unwilling to admit when you’re wrong, refuse to learn more, and get a rush of superiority when someone asks for help, your days are numbered. You may just be a troll. Your worst nightmare is no longer printers and people who didn’t turn it on, plug it in, or try to “turn it off and turn it back on again”, it’s A.I.
I talk to a lot of people who are afraid of A.I. and I’ve made my fair share of jokes about when the robot overlords come, but the majority of fears are simply based in the unknown. The joy about this is that it’s knowable information. You need to want to know it, though. And I do. Why? Because I want to stay relevant. Not like ‘understanding slang relevant’, because I just can’t with “fire” and “slay”, but relevant as in not clinging to fax machines, insisting on writing checks, and refusing to learn something new just because it’s new.
Cameras
Electricity
Cars
Airplanes
Radios
…
Microwaves
video games - from Pong to Q-Bert to Ghost of Yotei
the internet
WiFi
Cordless Telephones
Cell phones
Answering machines
Voice Mail
Email
Can you see where I’m going with this?
Bluetooth
Remote controls for t.v.s
VHS
CDs
Smart phones
Social media
Netflix
Workout apps
Online banking
Electronic check deposit
Zoom
Granted, Clint and I have lived without a microwave (and a garbage disposal) since we moved to Petersburg - it was a conscious decision - but everything from microwaves to Zoom came into popular use in my lifetime. The birth of these things likely started before I was born, but they became available for normal, non-military people in the past 50 years.
Can you imagine a person that doesn’t use any of these things? Even the Libertarian prepper I know in Montana has a flip phone and an email address.
Back when I worked in IT, I always said I wanted to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Being part of the solution, for me, doesn’t mean avoiding a thing entirely. It means using a thing responsibly, teaching others how to use it well (and responsibly), and working towards a more sustainable and efficient way to use it.
So, with my gussied-up resume and LinkedIn, along with all the certificates I’m gathering by doing an hour (or more) of an online course every day, I’m eating this AI and Data Analytics elephant one bite at a time. Just like when I got into yoga and when I got into wine, it turns out there’s a lot to know. But I don’t need to know all of it. I just need to find at least one thing, and follow that.
The worst thing would be to just refuse to learn any of it. There are beginner courses for everything and though technology is changing rapidly, you have to start somewhere.
A few weeks ago, I did the AI for Everyone course. Then the Generative AI for Everyone course. And now I’m learning a coding language. That’s kind of nuts to me.
Before I started my social media and Substack hiatus back in April, I was reading the book Happypedia that talked about the science of being happy, but also the inevitability or unavoidability of our lives based on our genetics and our experiences.
I recently finished the book The Medici Effect which talks about finding creativity and innovation at the intersection of things.
The sandwich of these books is that I’m currently working on building online workshops and classes that blend writing, yoga, meditation, painting, and the outdoors. I’m a trail runner, a writer, a new watercolor artist, and a yogi/yoga teacher.
And I only became a yoga teacher because back in 2014 I read What Color is Your Parachut? and decided that loving yoga + wanting to help people + enjoying teaching = I should be a yoga teacher.
When I look back at everything I’ve done - at all the stuff I put on my resume and also all the other stuff that I didn’t - it is no surprise that I’m doing any of this. When I just look at the past month, I am surprised, but when you look at the whole of it, I am not at all surprised that I want to get into Data Analytics run a creative studio and start online writing classes. The intersection of all those things is obvious to me and quite frankly, unavoidable.
If you can relate to any of this, I’d love to hear from you. I’m by no means an inspirational speaker, but I enjoy being a pointer outer of obvious things in other peoples’ lives and a kind of cheerleader. I think those two things put together is a teacher… or the annoying person you avoid at parties.
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