In an episode of Battlestar Galactica, the crew is attacked every 33 minutes. It’s not 30 minutes, or an hour it’s every 33 minutes. This is how this year felt with the constant left field plays or sudden twists and turns of job applications to interviewing to even finding clients. This year it always seemed like something happened every 33 minutes.

Life itself is foggy, we always walk through life in a fog wondering where the journey is going and this year was a journey my friends. I found myself questioning the nature of my reality at times due to the many upon many road blocks this year. What are these road blocks you ask? Well I started to apply for jobs cause the many hats I find myself wearing from being in the consultant world to be kind of exhausting, and I want to focus my skills into specific sectors of the tech world. It’s why when I went to Texas dreaming I started to focus my efforts on Pardot, Marketing Cloud and data analytics.

Refocusing my efforts into a specific area of the tech world was a vast undertaking but what helped me get through the stuff was the fact that a few people would contact me and ask me for help with Salesforce. The quick turn around times on specific projects wasn’t scary to me in the slightest, and quick turn around for Salesforce projects isn’t as quick as the marketing world, where days are hours. Also having people tell you, that yes you can achieve this, was definitely beyond helpful.

I always believe we are a product of our environment and I have noticed a trend this past year that scares me. It seems that a majority of people have become talkers. Whether it be a business idea or trying to help people. It was always marred by inaction and people would just talk. I was always brought up to do something, someone has trouble finding a job, ask them for their resume, offer to do a practice interview, ask people if they know what companies are hiring and finally just keeping an eye out for jobs that fit their goals. But in reality this past year during my search when I was having trouble scoring that job interview I was often met with the words “good luck on your search.”

Now as also diving into the fact that we are all products of our environment and people talk, I have often learned this past year that people / companies ghost. Ghosting has become so bad this year, I would say around half the companies I interviewed for would just disappear. I send follow up emails and nothing, I attribute this to the fact that I think it’s because we see our leaders in our world ghosting and turning everything into a numbers game and a race to the top. This person will cost this much but this other person will cost less so go with the less costly method and ignore the rest. I think we have forgotten that people are people, and we are not robots. Maybe we lost that part of ourselves the last few years.

Now not all companies are like this, there have been many that happen to call me, tell me I didn’t make it and give me feedback on how I can improve. If I was the right fit for that particular position yet a better fit for another position, they would refer me to the other position. I kind of wish more companies would give honest feedback instead of just up and disappearing.

Something I was told this year, especially by a number of clients or just people in general was that I was a doer. When a company I would apply for would ask for a PDF resume, or someone would refer me a job, I would do it like ASAP. I wouldn’t wait a week. It would be done that day. If I had a task on my task list, it would be done. This kind of struck me for a second, was not everyone a doer? I think it comes to the fact that it was one of those things that bothered me growing up. Some people like to talk, and others we just do things. But some people were shocked on a few projects when I had to jump on things quickly, I didn’t wait weeks to jump into something. It would be done because I do not want things to pile up on my plate…maybe thats why I always try to do things ASAP. I don’t want a sink full of dishes because it takes ten times as long to get things done when everything is overflowing and there isn’t room anywhere to put things.

This year was definitely one for a the record books, from the many ghostings, to the many job applications, to life always throwing something in front of me. It definitely felt like this year was out to get me. But I am hoping come 2020, into this new decade there can be a few new things such as a new job, a few Salesforce certifications and of course a few fun surprises.

”see you space cowboy…”