Assess your habits from week 2: how did you spend your time this past week? What was effective in your habits? What could be more effective? What steps will you take to make that happen?
I invested a good deal of time in trying to keep caught up with people on Slack, being more flexible in my scheduling and sadly escapism. I saw a good deal of success in starting my daily walks again, even if they can't be the hour long meander I wish they were. There was a flurry of connecting and meeting new people after last week's PD sessions so it has been a joy meeting new people!I love organic networking. I was able to do more temptation bundling with my walks, and the extra resources on the lessons we had this week.
I did however spend many hours staying up later than I should (2-6 am) trying to feel like I had any sort of day. Hopping on calls is starting to have some dread to it, only because I have never spent so many hours of my day directly socializing with other people. It's another kind of exhausting that I am still examining. Feeling that my day, and time are so heavily dictated by others has led me to seek comfort/control/ and serotonin in video games. I spent too much time there is last week and I can't afford to do that right now.
There has to be faster and more efficent ways to charge my batteries. Maybe an entire day of fully sticking to my timeblocks would mean that I get the balance I need, and wouldn't seek out time thieving activities. It is certainly worth a try.
When have you been excited, focused, and enjoyed your work? When have you felt bored, restless, or unhappy? When do you feel energized in your work? When is your energy drained?
I love when I feel more on top of most of my tasks and start to see that bigger picture. I love when I can work on a solo project in my own time and get things working with help from others, I have loved learning about accessibilty and TDD. I have felt bored when there is too much dictated time and I never get to go over topics again. I feel unhappy when being the bridge person in a group project so I've started having to take breaks whenever one of my partners does, just so I don't have to stay and catch the other member up, and do the same again when partner num. 1 returns. It's draining and makes me hate working with people when I can't take time I need.
My energy is drained after spending too long on a problem , or when I feel that I am incapable of comprehending the big picture. I can't lead thoughts, or see the structure of a program before building it. I still have to run my code to be sure of the outcome. I know these are experienced based worries and do NOT reflect my mental capacity. I will try to continue kowing this fact as often as possible.
Block out time on your calendar this week to work on your job search. When will you make this happen? How will you hold yourself accountable to this? What activities will you focus on during this time this week? What outcomes do you hope to reach by the end of this week because of these activities?
I am running out of day to block off. Everything takes me longer than I budget for, but I know this is my overall goal and I will do so. I have updated my LinkedIn, and started looking at BuiltInColorado.com. I think I can do this over my non working lunches Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I will pair with my Mentor for help with reaching out and messaging people to make connections. I have messaged Robyn as well about potenial companies that could be of interest to me. I would be more excited if I felt my skills were anywhere near job level, but I suppose job searching has a long lead time. My intent with this time to research all the companies that Robyn directed me to, find job listings, make note of what they are asking for, and looking for networking opportunies with my mentor.
Go through the resources listed here and explore 2-3 tools. List what you looked at here:
Apply wayfinding: of what you looked at, what did you discover that aligns with your vision? If it didn’t align with your vision, what will you try next? Decide what tools to bookmark to explore later.
I had encountered BuiltinColorado before and I took time to update my profile on that site and started saving some jobs that had popped up recently! I will continue to refer to this site. I did also google "software jobs in Luxury industry" as I have experience in that field . I found a few opportunities from that search. The listing of Colorado companies also helped. I pulled names that looked interesting and followed them on LinkedIn.
Find a job posting that aligns with your vision. What’s the posting? How does it align with what you’re looking for? Add it to your Huntr.
So I haven't found a position that exactly lines up with my vision, but looking for a good entry role somewhere in QA/Testing seems like a good segway into luxury/front-end/security software areas. I found a few positons that look fun! They have all been added to my huntr.
https://www.builtincolorado.com/job/engineer/associate-software-development-test-engineer/68076 https://www.builtincolorado.com/job/engineer/associate-ios-engineer/67600 https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=2020912636&f_CF=f_WRA&f_E=2%2C3&f_F=it%2Ceng&f_I=4%2C6%2C14%2C43%2C96&f_JT=F&f_SB2=3&f_T=9 https://www.builtincolorado.com/job/engineer/quality-assurance-associate/69475 https://www.builtincolorado.com/job/engineer/quality-assurance-specialist-i-adx-228-20/70284 https://www.builtincolorado.com/job/engineer/junior-full-stack-engineer/69899
What next steps will you take to explore that opportunity and find contacts? Add that information to your Huntr card.
Something that just brings me joy that many of the tech companies I'm seeing hiring, I've already interviewed with in my Ecommerce role so it will be great to reconnect to the people I spoke to within those companies. I have a few Dev friends and one family memeber who are eager to help out and find me a position after Turing. I want to work more with my mentor for all of the same resons and see if I can't land mulitple job offers.
This PD came at a very good time. It reminded me that all the struggle and sometimes pain of Turing is working towards this end goal and getting a good job that allows me to take care of myself and my mom. Sometimes all I want is a nice apartment looking over a park, with a balcony for my dog to bark off of and all my bills paid. Little dreams are just as important as the big ones.