Holding My Breath
For the last month, I’ve been actively seeking new employment opportunities. The startup I’ve been helping manage for the last 18 months has been running low on funds, and the purchase timeline for any products tends to be a 6-18 month turnaround from initial demo to product delivery. Additionally, this startup was conceived to serve a niche market of a niche market. It’s not dissimilar to trying to sell a moderately expensive jack-hammer to construction workers who rarely get approvals to buy new pick-axes.
During this period, and longer actually… stretching back to early 2022, I’ve been keenly aware of how the overall economy has been doing here in the US, watching 24 months of layoff announcement after layoff announcement, where tens, if not hundreds, of people I know began looking for new work. To find myself as one of them this late in the cycle… has been excruciating to say the least.
In the tech sector, we’ve seen several waves of cutting-edge technology crash into the shore of reality and retreat as all but temporary fads. First there were crypto currencies, then NFTs, then this talk of ‘The Metaverse’, and now we seem to be on the brink of the AI bubble bursting. We hold our breaths, waiting for the earnings calls of the biggest names in the industry, hoping that technology is still developing into something that’s actually useful, rather than just another grift or passing hobby. We wait for the news, and when it arrives, we breathe a long, shallow sigh of relief. Investment is still occurring, products and services are still being sold, and we dodge the bullet of another round of layoffs.
Next, we breathe in deep again, ready for the plunge into yet another monthly jobs report. The market remains stable. We slowly breathe out.
As the icy waves splash our toes, we take another breath, this time for the inflation report. Is it up? Is it down? Do we exhale? Or do we hold this gasp just a little longer? Spending is down, the economy continues to cool. Go, enjoy the long weekend, if you can.
I’ve been homeless before, though not as rough as living out of a car or on the street. When I was 13, my mother and I essentially couch-surfed between my grandparents and one of my aunts for almost 6 months. She’d finally left my father, who had been physically and emotionally abusive to her and I after a few years of trying, moving 800 miles back to our hometown and extended family. I was lucky. My grandparents allowed me to have a room in their basement while she sought out work an hour away. But it wasn’t my home and I was merely a guest.
It’s only now that I truly understand that we were indeed homeless, and that things only turned out as well as they did because of the kindness of those around us and because she was willing to accept whatever work she was fit to take. My mother’s stubborn refusal to let her son go without is something I’m not sure I’ve ever truly appreciated.
After a few months, we moved into an apartment as she’d landed work at a local food processing facility, where they’d pre-cook, batter, and deep freeze fish portions intended for a local fast-food chain. I only remember this because she’d occasionally be allowed bring some of the extra portions home, and they’d magically appear in our kitchen freezer.
It’s a good thing I’ve always liked fish sticks.
There are a few upcoming dates that haunt me: October 2, October 10, and October 16. These are all dates when my former employer will be making wide reaching announcements, which will then in turn affect whatever savings I have. If announcements are positively received, I’ll be able to expel a sigh of relief. These will be preceded by an announcement on September 18, where we’ll find out if/when interest rates will begin falling. This earlier announcement will be a key indicator as to whether tech sector startups will be able to begin hiring again.
Until those investments can be made, my plan is to continue spending every day filling out applications, writing cover letters, and otherwise advertising my skills and services to anyone interested in procuring them for an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly rate.
I’m terrified of being homeless. I’m almost just as terrified of having debt.
I moved to San Francisco twenty years ago, and one evening, my first week in the City, I was overcome with the realization of the decision I’d made, to uproot myself and move half a world away, leaving everything and everyone I knew behind.
Like hundred of thousands of other college students, took out loans to pay for my pursuit of higher education. Let me tell you, 200,000 in debt. It took me a decade of patience and paying only-interest for my luck to change, affording me the opportunity to wipe out said debt, and as luck would smile on me for another year, I was ultimately able to make a downpayment on a home, something I honestly never thought I’d be able to do.
As I stood alone, on the night where I finished cleaning out my old apartment, I broke down and wept. I wept in fear, sadness, and relief. I wept knowing that my life was changing in a fundamental way.
I wept again a few months later when I was dismissed from my job after succumbing to ever increasing stress and significant burnout. I wept knowing that my life was again evolving and that uncertainty had returned.
Last night, I wept as I put into words what success has meant to me, knowing that at some point in my life, I’d made a positive affect on so many others.
Tonight, I weep knowing that for ever sigh of relief, there is the ocean of terror in front of me, of the uncertain and unknown, of failure and loss, of shame.
Always of shame and loneliness. Living on the edge of town, staring out the window at a horizon at a sunset that rapidly fades into the cold dark of night.
I hold my breath, begging for the night to pass and to see the dawn again.