two years

I stopped writing for a while because there was nothing to report and things got bad during COVID. It has been a year and a half since the contract ended. I have not had a job since. That's the entry. I haven't found a job in Dallas yet and trust me I'm applying. Feels like these posting aren't even real. I lost a job doing SaleForce stuff after starting training because HR found out I was living in an AirBnB. Not sure how that makes sense.

The applications are in the hundreds now. I stopped keeping the exact count somewhere in the spring because the spreadsheet was becoming a mood disorder. The shape of it is always one of three: no answer at all, an answer in minutes from a clanker, or a process that goes four rounds across six weeks and ends with a freeze, a reorg, or a position that stops existing. The fourth-round ones are the expensive ones. You can't help building a little hope in your head by round three.

The strange part is watching the field move while standing still. I wrote in 2019 feeling like I'd caught up, hooks, the design system work, all of it. The ecosystem didn't wait. Everything is Next.js now, everything is TypeScript, interviews ask about things that got invented while I was sleeping in a Mini Cooper. So the days have a routine: applications in the morning, and in the afternoon I study like it's 2018 again, except in 2018 the not knowing felt like standing at the bottom of a hill and now it feels like sliding backwards down one. I know that isn't accurate. Knowing doesn't help on the bad days.

What actually helps, in no particular order: routine, the dog, building small things nobody asked for so the muscle doesn't go, and being honest when people ask how it's going instead of performing fine. Savings help until they don't. I'm closer to don't than I'd like.

I reread the entry from the van sometimes. That guy had less than I have now and was somehow more sure things would work out, and I've been trying to figure out what he had that I don't. I think it's just that he hadn't been told no yet. Anyway. Still here. Still applying. Loki's has some grey around his snout and stopped caring whether I'm employed. Thing's aren't exactly stable yet, but we're getting there. Oh and I have a new girlfriend.