SOME PERSONAL NEWS
Moving on, moving out, and screaming through it.
Our long national nightmare is over.
Nine months later, I’m no longer unemployed!
It’s the end of an era. I’d like to thank all of you for supporting me through it. My non-exhaustive thank you list includes: the New York State Department of Labor, the country of Mexico, the Marriott resort in Costa Rica, the state of Alaska, the Outer Banks in North Carolina, Rockaway Beach and the A train that goes there, my Brooklinen sheets under which I spent most of the year, and the Regal Cinemas monthly pass that let me see as many movies as I wanted for $20. Few activities in life are more satisfying and life-affirming than seeing a movie at 1PM on a weekday while slightly stoned.
Of course, I could not have done this without something very important. Things got scary, and there were moments that were really touch-and go, but you were really my rock: thank you, Chase Sapphire Ultimate Rewards credit card. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you. Seriously.
And also my friends and family. Love you guys!!!
THE TITULAR NEWS
I won’t bury the lede on this one. At the end of October, I started at Nike !!! I’m a Global Brand Manager on the Brand Defining, Purpose, and Athletes team. In non-LinkedIn speak: I’m helping Nike try and do good things and make people feel included in sport via marketing campaigns, specifically focusing on identity-based communities like LGBTQ+ people. I’m not sure that made it any clearer. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I do so I’ll keep you posted.
Let me resist the urge to say that this is my “dream job” because I don’t dream of labor. I dream that I’m drinking red wine with Taylor Swift and she’s telling me what really happened with Karlie Kloss.
Instead I’ll say this is a job I really, really, really wanted. Part of how I realized my line of work was even a thing was watching their “Stand for Something” ads featuring Colin Kaepernick while in college studying marketing. I feel very, very, very lucky to have landed a job and even luckier to have this job in particular!
I recognize that it will be easy to look at this and say “see, everything happens for a reason!” but, in the kindest way possible, I reject that!
I understand the urge: we want the things in our lives to make sense. We want to believe some higher power is looking out for us – this is the basis for most organized religion and the song “Bigger Than Us” from Meet Miley Cyrus, the B-Side of the Hannah Montana 2 soundtrack. We want good things to come from bad things. We want to believe that karma is real, that it’s our boyfriend, our god, or our cat, purring in our laps because it loves us.
I just find the whole narrative so boring. I think bad things happen for a number of reasons and you have to find a way to make it into a good thing. I didn’t get laid off because there was some better job waiting for me; I got laid off because I was a number on a spreadsheet as part of a cost-saving initiative.
I decided to make it worthwhile and set off on my months-long journey of “finding myself.” I returned from my low-budget Eat, Pray, Love remake (the working titles Eat, Gay, Love and Eat, Slay, Love were both rejected by the studio, sadly) with newfound perspective that eventually landed me the job I have now. What I’m saying is essentially: I want the credit! I’m the Mastermind and my dominoes are cascading in a line.
Another thing to make clear: I did not just magically waltz into this shiny new job. My job search didn’t resemble any kind of dancing, except maybe the murder-y ballets of Suspiria.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: JOB SEARCHING
If you’ve never tried to look for a job while unemployed, it’s brutal. Especially in a shitty job market with near-constant mass layoffs. Landing a job felt like competing in The Hunger Games, just without Stanley Tucci in fun outfits. Or the deaths. Although, parts of me nearly died.
I did everything I could. I applied for so many jobs. I did hundreds of interviews and wrote hundreds of thank you’s and did tens of unpaid assignments. I sent personal emails asking to be considered for roles when I could tell the algorithm weeded me out and spent hours trying to land the right balance between advocating and groveling. I don’t think I ever perfected it.
I saw enthusiastic referrals go nowhere, despite the genuine and very kind efforts of friends and colleagues (thank you for trying!). I made myself constantly available for interviews and then made myself even more available when the interviews inevitably got rescheduled the day of. In one such last-minute change, I ended up having to take an interview from a Panera in West Virginia. I never did hear back about that one.
I felt desperate to get a job and desperate to disguise my desperation. As the process went on and my bank account dwindled (see previous newsletters re: Mexico, Costa Rica, etc.), each one felt make-or-break… because it was. I had rent to pay and a credit card bill that was starting to look like an A24 horror movie: scary with a dark sense of humor. I was half-expecting Florence Pugh to come out of the bushes and feed me to a bear.
I tried so hard. So hard! And the effort I was putting in only served to make me feel worse: Is this just hard for me specifically because I am a bad, unhirable person?
I feel inclined to shout this all from the metaphorical rooftops not to scare anyone but because I honestly thought it’d be easier. I’d done this before and this time I had much more experience! I had a good job at a good company, wasn’t that enough? It all felt like being thrown back down to earth after riding so high. Given my already-devastating sense of impostor syndrome, I can’t say any of this was particularly helpful!
I felt increasingly isolated and scared and discouraged and, perhaps more than anything, embarrassed. Embarrassed that I ever thought it would be easy, embarrassed that I thought I was good enough, embarrassed that I was trying so hard only to go nowhere. I know I was in a bad headspace because I earnestly read Untamed by Glennon Doyle. Things were bleak!
Everywhere I turned, there were tips and tricks on acing the interview or perfecting the resume — the right questions to ask, the right fonts to use — but not nearly enough screaming. I wanted to hear what I knew: that it’s hard and degrading and miserable and it’s a miracle that any of us make it out alive.
And so by some miracle, some combination of luck and hard work and probably magic, I made it out alive. But know that I’m still screaming!
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT
I lied earlier because I did bury the lede. I’ve referenced a lot of movies already… what’s one with a good twist? Scream? Arrival? Gone Girl? The season 6 premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race where LaGanja Estranja stomps into the work room saying “y’all wanted a twist, eh? Come on season six, let’s get sickeninnnnnng” and then executes a technically flawless death drop? Take your pick!
My twist: I’m leaving New York and moving across the country! Early next year, I’m moving out to Portland, Oregon where Nike is headquartered. My current plan is to move at the end of January and be there for February.
If I sound calm about it, I’m doing a good job of lying because I’m genuinely terrified! And not in a “I’m just saying that” way but in a “I cried for like a full hour about this last weekend” way! #YearOfLying
I’ve lived on the East Coast my entire life. I spent eighteen years right outside of Boston, which means most of the water in my body comes from cans of Polar Seltzer and the melted ice of a Dunkin’ Donuts medium iced coffee.
Then I moved to New York for college and never looked back. I moved here when I was freshly 18 years old wearing a Lorde Pure Heroine shirt I bought on Etsy. I had a truly terrible picture of me wearing it on move-in day that has since been lost to time. Or, more accurately, lost to the phone thieves of Phoenix, the gay bar in the East Village where I spent almost every Friday in college.
Almost eight years later, I’ve finally reached the stage of New Yorker-ness that I dreamed about: I have amazing friends all across the city, beloved local haunts, and a great apartment with a great roommate and private outdoor space (!!!) that doesn’t cost me a million dollars. I can easily go see my family in Mass on the Amtrak without having to plan months ahead or spend a ton of money. Of course, catch me on a night where the G Train isn’t running and I’ll say something very different but generally speaking, I live in the best city in the world.
So why move??? And why move to Portland, Oregon?
When I accepted the job, I’d been there all of one time for all of four days. I had a good time but I definitely didn’t leave thinking I’d move there. I didn’t even know anyone who lived there except one guy I hooked up years ago when we both happened to be visiting Spain from New York City. He was so sunburnt, he was painful to touch. He’s a doctor in Portland now so shout out to him! But seriously shout out because he’s about to be my only friend!
PENCILS DOWN
I know I told you I’m a Mastermind but this was not a part of my master plan. Proof: I re-signed my lease for two years in July!
I only applied to remote jobs or jobs in New York. Except for this one. I came across the job online and I knew it was based at their World Headquarters in Oregon but I wanted it so badly I couldn’t not apply. When they asked me in my first phone-screen if I’d relocate should I be offered the job, I said of course! Why not? And then I kept getting interviews and they kept asking me if I was sure I’d want to move and I kept saying yes.
I never thought I was going to get the job so I never thought I’d have to make the choice. And I wasn’t betting on it! I had another, less exciting gig lined up that I was going to do, a fully-remote job for a big tech company. They’ll remain nameless because they’re already not thrilled with me and why push it?
Then came the call that I got the job and the decision became very real. Do I take the job that would let me live my life as-is or do I take the job that would require me to upend my life? Do I take the safe choice or the very, very scary one? The humor of my long fruitless job search ending with a sudden twist of fate is not lost on me. When it rains, it pours, and it rains a lot in Portland.
I didn’t make the decision lightly because I’ve never made any decision lightly. Just ask Danielle, to whom I was live-texting my Cyber Monday mattress purchase all weekend:
So I didn’t exactly keep it cool with a decision of this magnitude.
I really tested how much my friends actually like me by forcing them to talk it through with me ad nauseam. I’m very grateful for everyone who made time to hear me spiral: Bella and I walked through the pros and cons as we walked to the Crunch Gym where she had left her water bottle; Megan called to give me advice after she put her newborn baby to sleep; Matthew FaceTimed me from Phoenix to tell me I should try and just work two jobs at the same time. The first person I called when I got the offer was Farah, who was fully out of the country drinking a glass of wine (you’d be surprised how frequently this is the case when I call her) and told me what I already knew: You’re going to do it.
In the second season of Fleabag, she asks her therapist what she should do about the hot priest and her therapist says, “You already know what you’re going to do.” She’s annoyed because why would she be asking if she didn’t know? But later she realizes her therapist is right. She knew. And I knew. Despite my decision-time panic, I knew from the moment I submitted my application I was going to move there if it came down to it.
There was something weighing on me though, outside of the whole move-to-a-completely-new-city-where-you-know-no-one thing. After spending three years at a company so chaotic it’s destined to become a Hulu miniseries, I swore I’d prioritize the life part of the work-life balance. By moving across the country for this job, even if it was a good opportunity, wasn’t I betraying my original plan? Wasn’t I choosing work over life?
IT’S TIME TO GO
What I kept coming back to, and the ultimate answer to why I’m moving, is that it’s not just about the job. It’s about me wanting more from my life. I could feasibly stay in New York forever. I’m comfortable enough. But after everything that happened this year I kept feeling like: the world is so big and we are so small and life is so short, shouldn’t I try to experience more of it? The job is the thing that actually gets me out of my bed and into the “more” that I want. I have this opportunity to go live on the West Coast, to meet more people and try more things and go more places. Why not take it?
When I got laid off, my life opened up in front of me: I saw the ways my life could be different and I pushed myself to experience more. I wrote more, I traveled more, I read more! I also cried more and stressed more and spent more money than I had any right to but I learned a lot (probably too much) about myself in the process. (Namely, that I should only spend money that I have.)
I want to believe that this time of my life isn’t just a one-off, that I can hold onto that sense of possibility. I saw ways my life could be different, I lived very different versions of my life — from skiing in Alaska to surfing in Mexico to writing these too personal, too long newsletters — and I decided I did indeed want my life to be different.
As it is written, so it shall be done. I’m moving to Portland, Oregon!
Maybe I’ll look back on this as the worst decision I’ve ever made and cringe at this email when I move back to Brooklyn after a year. Maybe it’ll be the best decision and I’ll move out west and never look back, not at all deterred by the fact that there isn't a single Dunkin’ Donuts in the state of Oregon. NOT ONE!!!
Whatever it is — it’s a decision, not the decision. A decision, not the decision. One of many, many decisions I’ll make in my silly little life. There’s only more to come.
And there’s more to come here on Whining in Public, a name I’m admittedly sick of and tempted to change ! You’re along for the ride, so please fasten your seatbelts. Speaking of: I have to get a CAR and DRIVE!!! What the fuck? I welcome any and all recommendations for how to make a long-distance move without going crazy. Or crazier than I already am.
THANKS FOR READING + SEE YOU SOON
XOXO COLIN
Congratulations Colin!!!
Jesus Horatio Christ! The writing here is excellent. Raw and funny and smart and thoughtful. But the truths you lay down about the absolute torture of the job search are...well, powerful is an understatement.
Thank you for putting all that into beautiful words.
Best of luck out West.