#PastebinMonday 01/02/2023 Looking Forward to 2023... And My New Job Edition

'Sup, doods!

Yes, 2022 is done and so is my day job—well, my CURRENT day job. This was the announcement I made and alluded to on Friday.

When I didn't get a fair shake at a raise and didn't get a good reason for it, I actually got motivated to do something I thought I was too complacent and timid to ever do: search for a new job and do interviews while actively employed. (What can I say? I love my routines. I'm not good at networking. Yes, I need to change that!)

At first, I was only interested in remote work. I would rather not deal with a commute and travel to an office miles from home every day. Remote jobs, however, are too competitive for most people to go for. Literally hundreds of people all over the country apply for those jobs and, even as someone with a relevant Master's degree and 10 years of relevant experience, I could only get two interviews in, maybe, 100 applications.

The biggest takeaway from my experience is that you have to actually play the game the system presents to you. A resume is standard for my type of work, but without the cover letter, you are SUNK. You cannot get in the door without dotting every single i and crossing every single t that can be part of the process. It's frustrating that the process has become so bureaucratic, but it has to be done if you want anything to change.

Anywell, I eventually found some local opportunities I was willing to go along with and played the game with those. Soon after, one of those local companies gave me an interview. It was so interesting because they insisted on an in-person interview and I pointed out that I had no transportation (read: no license) and no time off to spare during office hours, and yet they agreed to interview by phone. Then, they figured out that they were in line with my normal commute and offered me to go to their office in the morning before I was to report to work to have a face-to-face conversation. I have NEVER had a prospective employer ask me to interview BEFORE their office hours. It's the most accommodation I have ever experienced in a hiring process. All that said, I did my usual stuttering and muttering in unfamiliar situations during those interviews and did not expect anything else of it.

Then Tuesday came. As soon as I was about to sit down and start my first day of work back from Christmas, that company gave me a call. They called me to give me an offer. They offered me the top end of their advertised pay range, a 30% raise from what I was making. I gave my current employer an opportunity to counter, but they disappointed me one last time.

My last day was Friday. One side effect of this that isn't all that great is that I no longer have health insurance to justify going to a doctor this month like I said I would. I'm probably going to get on another policy and revisit the idea in a few months.

The whole process of going through applications took a couple of months. I am kinda surprised that I was able to engage in a networking activity and get something positive out of it. Still not a fan, though. On a related note, I should get ideas for stream collabs I could do. I don't actually approach people as much as I should if I am going to try and make the streaming thing a future full-time job. Do you have any ideas?

I start my new job in two weeks. It's a new industry for me, but there haven't been too many new challenges that I have not been able to overcome in my life. I look forward to what's next.

Before looking forward, I suppose I should look back on what I did in 2022. 2022 was a year of Puzzle League. 2022 was a year of focusing on the puzzle speedrun tournaments. 2022 was a year of losing in the puzzle speedrun tournaments. 2022 was a year of putting my own content in the backseat. There's a part of me that enjoys the production process. There's a creative side of me that needs a creative outlet and the tournament production is a creative outlet. There's also a part of me that just wants to play games and show myself off playing them. I kind of leaned in hard on casual games and mobile games in my downtime this year in order to just play games, but they started taking up too much of my time and I broke off of most of them.

At the end of the day, I feel like I just “lost” 2022 and got very little out of it.

I look forward to starting to change that in 2023 for my content. I have been going through a passion project that I think the Puzzle League community has sorely needed for so long and I feel like one of the few people in the world qualified to make it happen. I have many scripts left to write for my tutorial series, but I just gained a two week vacation to put a lot of time into finishing them. Once the whole process is done, I think I can branch out in my variety. I don't know if 2023 will be the year to get into a full swing of what I want to give to the world, but I feel on pace to present something new by the start of 2024. Below is what it is going to take.

Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals:

Goal #5: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. Now I am writing scripts on how to speedrun the series. Currently, I have to finish Game Boy Tetris Attack, Pokémon Puzzle Challenge, and finally Pokémon Puzzle League. I expect to start recording gameplay once that is all done. Maybe I do that part on stream? Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. I do not have the focus to do that on stream.
Goal #6: clean up my own stream layout. I am brainstorming how I want the final theming to be. I probably want to give people multiple options, maybe allow spending bits to change the look. I don't have anything written down yet. I don't expect to get to this anytime soon.


Back to chatting and rewriting on Tuesday! I've got a lot to give this week!

That’s my life story for the week. Later, doods!

--Cards