Catch Up Musings (May & June)
Sorry for going MIA... again
So I started writing again for like 2 weeks and then the weight of being laid off and having all the kids home for summer completely pulled me down. I went back to my virtual writing desk many times only to feel nothing of substance, missing internal deadlines I set for myself while receiving rejection emails from places I applied and dealing with some pretty significant challenges within my family.
I needed the rest of May to recover. And then I needed all of June to recover. Now July is here and I’m feeling a bit more like myself and trying to ease back into the habits I was trying to form before things were upended in my life repeatedly. So this newsletter will be catching up on the last two months. Some topics require their own separate post, but I’ll let you in on everything that’s been going on.
I turned 35.
I turned 35 back in May. I’ve gone back and forth on feeling unbothered by it to being in a full on panic about it. For the first time in my life, I feel a bit younger than I am, especially as I’ve started engaging in things that make me happy and creative again. But when I look at the life around me - owning a house, 5 kids, established career - in addition to the times I’ve thrown out my back brushing my teeth or how my stomach can’t handle more than a few glasses of wine, it feels more appropriate to be turning 35.
My kids insist that I’m still young in the unintentionally condescending tone that young people talk about age. I know I’m still young, especially when I see the way my mom is kicking ass in her 60s, but 35 years in opens your eyes to how brief it all can be. I’ve lost family and friends now, which wasn’t the case when I turned 30, so while I know I’m relatively young I also feel like every new year is winning a lottery of some kind. If anything, growing older encourages me to live the best way I can and chase joy in a way I took for granted when I was younger.
Being laid off was harder on me than I thought
Being laid off from Meta in April was tough, as I wrote back in April. While I did everything I could to ease myself into the job search and a new routine, I still wasn’t prepared. I went through a full interview cycle pretty quickly after coming on the market. I thought I jumped back in relatively well, but during one stretch I had 4 interviews over 3 days and didn’t show up as my best self during the 2nd of those days (partly due to being sick and partly due to not being as prepped as I would like). I still thought I did well enough to land the job but it turns out no one that was being interviewed during that time was selected. I suppose the hiring team was more picky than they needed to be.
That rejection hit me hard. On top of that, I didn’t really have any leads at the time and started spiraling on how to optimize my resume. I started losing all motivation for even applying to jobs because I felt I needed to do this thing and that thing first before I could even apply, getting myself lost in a loop of no progress. Even referrals I received from friends across the industry went little to nowhere. I was feeling pretty down in general and every subsequent rejection would send me into a depression. I hadn’t considered the effect losing my favorite job I’ve ever had would have on me. Yes, the company and the day-to-day wasn’t always great. But that job was the first time I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing and using all my strengths to their best ability. Losing all of that and having to consider jobs that don’t necessarily fit all the criteria I had before made me unmotivated to even try.
Then one week things just clicked. I finally got screen calls scheduled for a couple of roles I had applied to weeks earlier and a recruiter for a contract role got back to me after 2 weeks and setup an interview with a manager I knew previously. Entering those interview cycles and securing that contract role that runs through September completely reinvigorated me and got me back to myself. Now I’m working this contract role while continuing to interview and apply again knowing I have a bit more runway. This all makes such a huge difference. The road ahead still isn't easy and I’m more stretched by working and applying, but being financially secure in the near future and in the practice of doing the work I do has increased my confidence in the process.
My son came out as trans
This one was both a shock and completely predictable depending on how wide I was willing to open my eyes on a given day.
My son has been obsessed with “boy clothes” and “boy things” for the better part of the last year. While my wife (Liz) and I obliged by letting him choose his clothes so he could feel comfortable, we chalked a lot of this up to his latest obsession. My son is also on the autism spectrum and tends to go deep into a certain type of animal or show or game and only talk about that for months at a time. It’s not that we thought this was all a phase or anything, just that he might be projecting something else on his mind and coping by doing some “boy things” to feel unique.
Then a few things happened in succession over the last few months that put all of this into perspective:
As my son continued therapy, he started to tell my wife more of his preferences. He finally got to the point where he asked to be referred to with “he/him” pronouns.
During a checkup with his pediatrician, he got really upset when he was being examined. He was in the room privately with the doctor but my wife could hear him outside the door crying and exclaiming, “I’m not a girl! I’m a boy!” That situation was heartbreaking and showed how serious this was for him.
He continued to feel close to Liz and kept expressing more of his desires. He finally got to the point where he wanted to cut his hair short. I asked my friend who styles my hair if she would be willing to take the big step with my son and she agreed and handled everything in the most gentle, supportive, and loving way.
With his hair short, in the clothes that made him comfortable, and using the pronouns he identified with, suddenly my son was back to himself. During a subsequent therapy session, he asked me to join him and his therapist and I shared how he had seemed so stressed and unlike himself over the last year and that I felt more connected to him than I had in a long time.
Has this been hard and challenging? Absolutely. But all that matters is that my son is happy and comfortable in his skin. I’ll go into my journey with it all in another post sometime, but his happiness is all that matters and I’m glad we are there.
Everything Else
Throughout all of this, there’s also been the typical summer struggles of being a parent. Kids are home more and need more to do precisely at the moment you need to look for a job or do something that’s taxing on your mental energy. There was also two birthday parties for my two daughters, various appointments for the family, our cars, and more, paying off debt with some of the money from my severance, going to the lake or the pool with everyone, playing the new Zelda game which took over my brain for a month and a half, and trying to still find time to be creative and productive.
I have thoughts on music, movies, and more that I’ll share in a mid-year entertainment review post soon. I’ll also dive deeper on some of these topics over the next few months.
My hope now is that I can get back to being consistent. Thanks again for coming on my journey with me.