Hello, friends! For the three or four of you that I am not friends with on Facebook, or we don’t follow each other on Twitter, Saturday was my last day working at WhereBy.Us. The goal of this personal newsletter isn’t to gossip about friends, family*, or former coworkers and to be honest, everyone at WhereBy.Us are good, talented, smart, engaging people. I’m now looking for new opportunities, throwing caution to the wind and seeing where the next career leads me.

As most of you know I had been on an eight-week unpaid sabbatical previous, it technically doesn’t really change anything day to day; just the knowledge that those changes are in the horizon and my resources are finite. I’m channeling my inner Asian dad, giving myself some structure.

I’m surprisingly calm, even though this is the first time in a while where I’ve left a place of employment without already finding a new job. 

That said, my sleep patterns have been trash. 

For example, two nights ago for dinner, I had steamed mahi-mahi and two cups of broccoli. I’m going low-carb and that sounds reasonable, right? Healthy even! Then I went to bed dreaming of cooking saag paneer over an open flame, to the disgust of the group of South Asians I was preparing for. This is disgusting, they say; too spicy! I wake up at four in the morning to the agitation of my partner, drink a glass of water, go back to bed, and then have a variation of the same dream again. This time it wasn’t spicy enough. They may have also thrown a wok at me. Look, dreams are weird, alright?

Last night I had the same type of sleep, but this time, the dream centered around JavaScript programming. Hours before, I got an email from a company where to apply for jobs you submit programming homework, and they “decided to pursue other applicants who more closely reflect the needs of this position.” Of course, they’re “unable to provide specific assessment feedback to individual candidates.” That night, I dreamt I was at a laptop, repeating my homework submission, failing all over again. It had the classic dream elements where you’re back in college, and you’ve slept through your chem final. It was like I was trying to make up for any mistakes I made. Wake up again, use the bathroom, fall asleep to visions of JavaScript promises hastily edited with a red marker.

My theory is that it’s my subconscious, telling me that maybe I should look into tech positions that don’t solely involve pure development. I mean, I’m getting older now. I don’t think my special sauce comes from just programming. There may be thousands of better programmers, but is any of them as zany as I am? No. On the other hand, no positions exist that are, say, 20% web developer and 80% rodeo clown, otherwise I would have cornered that market years ago.

Oh man. Maybe I do need sleep.

* Okay, maybe it exists to talk trash about my family a little bit