You Know The Spinning Wheel of Death on your Macbook Air?
Your Career Can Get That Way Sometimes, Too
If your job had a screen, what would be on it right now?
A cool line graph with an arrow going up and to the right? A dance reel? A Chrome browser with 36 tabs open?
How about the Spinning Wait Cursor?
Photo by Oliver Cole on Unsplash
Four years ago, Dana quit a nonprofit job overseas and came back to the U.S. Since then, she’s had a different job every year, sometimes holding more than one at once.
How should she put any of this on her resume? What is the story of her early career? Is it a tale of indecision? Is it a tale of a job market gone weird?
This week’s pod suggests a different narrative, a story of resilient discernment. Leaving your job takes grit: you have to bear with the fact of a nonlinear life. Leaving your job also takes shrewdness: you have to practice selectivity as you interview in organizations where you’re not sure what’s Really Real and what’s Website Real.
Sometimes the spinning wheel cursor on your Mac just means you need to clear some space. This episode will help you do that.
David Wilsterman, Emily Bosscher, Dana Krol, LaShone Manuel, and Craig Mattson (Photo by Sarah Hao)
If you’re a reader of the Substack newsletter The Mode Switch, you’ll note this podcast responds to an argument in the February 4, 2023 issue, discussing the rich and complex stories of four early-to-mid-career professionals: Andrea Munday, Bre Rodgriguez, Eric Freeman, and Julia Belcher.
Companies today claim to be increasingly open to complex identities and diverse life experiences. But when your experience involves religious de-conversion, chronic illness, incarceration, political difference, can you bring those stories to work? Or should you take them elsewhere?
Sometimes the spinning wheel of death has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the slow processing speeds of corporate America.
Hey, thanks for checking out this newsletter. Early career professionalism needs a community, and I hope this Substack affords you that.
If our conversation provokes a deeper dive, check out this NYT article, “Should You Quit Your Job?” and Derek Thompson’s Atlantic piece, “Quit Your Job.” Easily, the most fascinating memoir I’ve read on job-change came out just last year: Jonathan Malesic’s The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives.
Do these questions make you tired? Try watching “The Parking Lot Movie.” You’ll find some over-educated and under-employed characters saying funny things about work in these here United States.
-craig
