Reflections of the End of Funemployment

As the blog title suggests, this [all too long] funemployment life is ending soon, which means hooray I will be working again! Earlier in September I accepted a 3-month internship offer at a startup and they were really gracious in waiting for me to finish up my other interviews and being open to negotiations (compensation/benefits/start date). I told them I was available to start work beginning of October, and they actually pushed my start date to the 16th. TBH I was super relieved to have been given this buffer of time to catch up on some much needed sleep, relaxation and me-time.

Even though I had initially been hoping for a full time job post-Hackbright, I'm really just eager to get started on my career in software engineering. I realized that an internship might actually be a blessing in disguise; I'm sure the learning curve will be steep and really hard, but I'm hoping that knowing that my main purpose is to learn above all else will make my transition into the industry a little less intimidating.

So far I have taken advantage of the remaining weeks of my funemployment (sans job search) by:

• Sleeping, loads of it.
• Visiting my sister, her newly adopted bunnies (4!), and my high school best friend in Corona/LA
• Attending CRSSD and showing the bf my old stomping grounds in San Diego
• Cooking, a lot! I've experimented with steak, artichokes, shoyu tamago, chimichurri sauce, lots of noodles, etc
• Binge watching Parks & Rec (1 more season to go!), and many other shows on Netflix
• Volunteer coding for SponsorLane
• Building a full-stack app with the MERN stack...slowly but surely
• Accompanying the bf to Santa Rosa for the Sonoma Harvest Festival. I unintentionally scored a free wine/food tasting experience there by befriending some winemakers from Ekitmo who were all too eager to meet someone who can speak Mandarin there
• Purchasing tix to the Museum of Ice Cream. I couldn't help it!
• Running more than I did while job searching, although still not as much as I'd like
• Fooding. Did I mention food?

Also, if you haven't tried TJ's uncultured butter from Brittany, France, do yourself a favor and get it. 

With this carefree lifestyle coming to an end, I'm now back in studying mode. Actually, I don't think I've ever truly stepped out of studying mode for more than a day or two. It's been interesting having an unstructured lifestyle with no concrete obligations or schedule for the past few months (especially in this last month once I stopped job searching), but I also feel immense pressure to make the most of my time...even pressure to have as much fun as possible! 

For instance, if I wake up past 11am or noon, on one hand I feel like I've wasted so much time I could have spent in the park/beach/city, but on the other I'm faced with an internal battle thinking about how much I'm going to miss sleep once work begins. 

Another thing is I feel bad whenever I'm not coding and studying with all this free time, but when I do spend a good portion of my day coding and watching video tutorials, I feel bad not being out in the sun. I can't win with myself!

However I will say that I'm extremely grateful for these first world problems. I'm grateful that this startup took a chance on me, I'm grateful I made my personal goal of finding a job within the 3-month mark, and I'm grateful I won't have to go to bed wondering if I'll need to ask my parents to sponsor my unemployed self soon (at least not for the next few months). 

Also, honorary mention:

You've kept me sane throughout this process. Thank you, gracias, xie xie.