In August I had my position at Thoughtworks made redundant. I have a family and a mortgage, so naturally I’ve been trying really hard to find a new role somewhere. I haven’t been through a redundancy before, and I’ve found its taking quite a mental toll on me, and by extension - my family. The timing isn’t great, we had just welcomed a new baby boy into the family, and to top it off my partner broke her hand leaving her not in a position to do a lot of the daily care of our now two young boys.
I’ve been working my network trying to get conversations about new opportunities going, and that’s been going okay. I’ve been getting a little frustrated at my own lack of progress however, and trying to think of things I can be doing to expedite the process.
An idea came to me: to set myself the challenge of writing one blog post every day until I accept a job offer.
There are a few things I’m hoping to get out of this:
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Force myself to get back into the groove of writing
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Increase my public profile as a professional (I will share all my posts on social media)
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Improve my mental health during this challenging situation
I’m not going to set too many rules for myself - if I make the challenge too hard I’ll probably just quit. I’m going to allow myself to write about whatever I feel like writing about. I’m also not going to obsess too much about the writing itself, as in, whether its any good - so bare with me (see I already failed this because I googled it and the phrase is bear with me…).
Topics are likely to include:
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Things that interest me relating to software quality and delivery practices
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Career-oriented topics (imposter syndrome, mentorship, motivation)
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Personal life-oriented topics (work/life balance, video games)
The challenge starts today, and this is my first post in the series. If any of those topics above sound interesting - or you just want to come with me on this journey, hit follow or subscribe or whatever.
kbye