I’m taking a pause from the book-writing to give you a peek behind my curtain (how titillating).
In 2020, I caught a deadly disease: confidence. Side-effects of confidence typically include attracting others to you, imbuing you with a strong internal locus of control, and settings yourself up for success.1
For me, confidence helped convince my wife to leave her steady job in the middle of a pandemic to help me launch a consultancy with zero prospective clients. Meanwhile, confidence ignored the wedding which loomed heavy over our heads, the price tag of which was raising like the debt ceiling. And confidence was indifferent to the fact that what little cash I locked away in my brokerage account was slipping through the bars.
In October, I lost my primary source of income. I had a small-business owner in Nevada as a marketing and design client, and he lost a tremendous amount of business due to the pandemic. While working with him, I made no effort to secure similar clients for want of a better role, so I plowed forward… with confidence by my side.
In February of 2021, with our wedding four-months away following a string of dead-end prospect meetings, I went out looking for a job – it’d be my first since Bloc laid me off in 2016. Returning to a 9-to-5 software gig after years of independence brought me great sadness; it was a full retreat.
Full Retreat
I hadn’t practiced software development as a professional in 5-years, nor did I remain a specialist in developing applications for Android, my first and most marketable skillset. I sought a front-end web development position, and I fully expected to earn less than I had in my previous role.
I felt such shame for having to do this that I kept it private. I told some family and close friends, but played it close to the chest in the off-chance that I encountered a knight in shining armor client – turns out, I ain’t Rapunzel.
Expectedly, the job search was lamentable. Countless reposts, resume-capturing ads, unattainable job qualifications, and Indian recruiters from the “Bay area” fought daily for my apathetic attention. And each day, I dedicated several hours to batting away the frauds in search of a job I didn’t want, but one I was in desperate need of. Then, something peculiar happened.
Something Peculiar, You Say?
10-years ago, my best-friend and I had little more than a couch and our two laptops to occupy us. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, which clocked in at a penny-saving $3,000 per month. To earn extra cash on the side, we took on mobile development projects.
A pair of University alumni approached us with a second-screen concept they wanted to prototype; second-screen was all the rage back then. We built their app for $8,000 and parted ways amicably. Fast-forward to when I began developing my marketing skills as a freelancer, I was touching base with those two guys now and then to offer my help.
This past February, those two happened to be the co-founders of a profitable 3-year-old cryptocurrency startup named Shrimpy, and the CEO Michael McCarty emailed me out of no where. He too was desperate, desperate to find a developer.
He knew I was a talented engineer, but expressed gratitude for the marketing advice I provided him over the past few years. He believed that in time, I could ascend from my development role at Shrimpy to take charge of the product itself. But to someone with near zero interest in cryptocurrency nor finance nor a full-time career, he may as well have promised that job to a tree stump.
“Tell Me About The Job.”
It paid the same as my previous. Okay. I could work remotely 100 percent of the time. Great. And despite being unfamiliar with their chosen software framework, they were willing to give me a shot. Triple-check.
The following months proved dramatic. I learned and began to care about Bitcoin and our financial system (you know this if you’ve read my earlier posts on Hey World). I learned how to develop with Angular. I got married on the most beautiful day of the year to the most beautiful person of the year.
Our wedding date just so happened to be the first weekend Chicago lifted its mask mandate – one week prior, our wedding venue prohibited both dancing and congregating. And most magical of all… we came in under budget.
and 7-months after my conversation with Michael, I’m happy to announce that today, the day of this publication, I begin my role as Shrimpy’s Head of Product.
In one of my darkest moments last Winter, I stumbled onto circumambulation. Specifically, I discovered how Carl Jung saw people as circling their truest, most valuable selves – moving ever closer, but always tangentially toward a destination they cannot perceive. I don’t know what this role means for me yet, but it feels like a step deeper into the circle, it feels like a big day.
I have luck to thank, skill to thank, and you to thank for being the ear that receives whatever knowledge I can impart to it. Thank you for sticking with me, and if you’ll do me one more favor: wish me some goddamned luck.
Results not typical