The one where I got a job

An actor’s portrayal of my reaction

I’ve written a lot about jobs here. Unemployment, overemployment, burnout, ambition, PTO. So I figure I owe you all a job update of my own.

Soon after my big trip, I started a full-time role creating content for Chartbeat, an analytics service that helps newsrooms and digital publishers like The New York Times and CNN unlock insights from their content data and keep their audiences engaged with tools that test where content should live on their homepage or what headlines and images will resonate with their audience.

As someone who started his (more) professional (than selling shoes at PacSun) career as an intern in the local newsroom and is now working on his own publication, it’s a funny little circle I’ve found myself in. It’s a happy, healthcare-providing ending, but it’s also been a long, strange trip.

Back in the spring of 2020, I chatted with a lot of recent grads from my alma mater who were understandably freaked out about the state of the economy. I did my best to assuage their fears, letting them know that even an English major like myself had landed on his feet eventually. Little did they know, at the same time, I was winding down at my full-time job and staring headlong into the same abyss.

A lot of these conversations went the same way. I told them: be yourself where possible, fake it ‘til you make it where not, and, above all, work on things you want to work on. In case it was helpful to others in the same boat, I even wrote up my version of “dressing for the job you want” on LinkedIn.

A few months later, without an ounce of self-awareness, I began writing this letter. The edition I consider to be the first went out to just 4 people. I was writing because I had time and because when I sat down and asked myself what I wanted to do with that time, the only answer was to write. If a few friends wanted to read it, all the better.

Then a funny thing happened. As more and more friends began to read the work I thought I was doing just for myself, they began to ask if I could do some writing for them or someone in their network looking for help. Before I knew it, I’d inadvertently followed my own advice and manufactured the experience and work samples needed to confidently write for hire. A few months later, I was on a train in Italy praying we wouldn’t go through another tunnel until after I finished a call about a job offer.

Though it’s not difficult to see a project like this falling by the wayside as I dive in to a new full-time undertaking, this is not a farewell post—it’s just an update.

We’ve all let go of something we loved because something we didn’t demanded more of our time and energy, but I have no intention of giving this up. It’s where I get to experiment and have fun. And just as that was important for gaining experience and confidence when I didn’t yet know what I was trying to be, I think it will be an important counterweight as I spend my days writing in this new setting.

So I’ll see you next Thursday, and the one after that.