Giving Up to Get Ahead | R100 Series

Today’s post is reflecting on the day I did the deed and quit the job I had, stacking pallets. As much as I’m not afraid of honest work, it reflects a different lack of good sense to stay in a job beneath my abilities.

This was right before I fully decided to go all in on coding. As I’ve learned since then, learning to code does not directly equal job. Yes there’s demand, but there are high costs to the employer when they bring on a bad coder, so they’re understandably cautious.

Let’s get into it:

Today I resigned from the pallet company. I went in person to do it right—nobody there earned a ghosting. Letter of resignation and the whole bit.

For not a lot of money per hour, I was not doing the main career sort of thing I'd like to be doing. I was so tired at the end of each workday that I could only vegetate.

One lesson: if you have to have a day job to support your on-the-side-for-now thing, choose something that leaves you some leftovers.

So that part there is pretty straightforward. They were decent people, so I wasn’t going to just never show up again. I could at least do them the honor of resigning in person.

At the time, I was playing with the idea of stacking pallets while trying to keep copywriting going. I would come home as worn out as a regularly used tuxedo. That didn’t help. Maybe I would have adjusted, but that’s not the way things went.

Right now my expenses are low enough that I can keep trying without the rent clock winding down to eviction doomsday. My budget is also very low, so there's that.

Will I dive into studying programming?

Will I go back into copywriting?

One conversation suggested that I might have the knack for copywriting. I can get on a platform where the buyers are and I "get in the reps" with experience and build references and all that.

“Getting in the reps” is definitely a thing. I hate that practice portfolio projects aren’t real. It’s one thing to sell services to a real client and then see results. It’s another to come up with a good idea … but then have no confirmation that I did the job. Or feedback that I didn’t.

But getting in the reps as a freelancer means marketing. I only have so much personal energy to deal with a nutcase client who, already paying little, demands further rounds of revisions. And the terror of finding such a one is paralyzing.

How about doing a do-it-myself tech boot camp?

Another conversation suggested that doing 10-12 hours a day of coding would burn me out. So I could start with coding study but start short.

I could do both.

“Both” wasn’t going to happen. And interruptions from grandparents needing help really really throw me off. I can’t concentrate if I’m standing by for Grandpa to need to do what comes naturally to all men and need help changing if something doesn’t go right (or had gone wrong before further information had been provided).

Getting a job would solve most of the big problems. Telling someone exactly what I'm good at is tricky without a portfolio or X years of experience.

I've also got a podcast about China that I'm working on.

On with the show.

So we boil it down to two things: getting a job, providing proof to get a job.

There are many ways to get there, but committing to one path means turning aside from other paths.

I’ll be able to zoom through some of my early days of coding because there was a lot of banging my head against the wall realizing I was making mistakes, not the browser giving bad feedback.

Whatever.

Stay tuned for the next one.