Getting a career back on track

 There are those moments where you find yourself wondering what exactly it is that you're headed towards in your life. If the answer is 'not much', then that might explain some frustrations you're experiencing. Whether stuck in a dead-end job, or dealing with the fall-out from years of a tumultuous, traumatic life, the hardest but also most important step is to admit for yourself that you're not happy, and that you want things to change.

What does it take to be happy? If I were to consider my own life the past few years, it would have to be about regaining a measure of control, instead of being tossed around passively like a piece of driftwood. Merely promising myself that things would suddenly change for the better through a project like NymphCast [1], or by having my autobiography published. Pinning your hopes on such things doesn't make you regain control of your life.


Of course, I will readily admit the things which I have learned from the NymphCast project. It's been a great lesson in project management and development on embedded systems, getting to know the intricacies of aligned memory access with the NymphRPC project [2] on ARM processors while implementing a zero copy optimisation. Also small things like creating a lock-free ring buffer implementation [3].

Implementing service discovery in a more light-weight way than that offered by mDNS and kin in the form of NyanSD [4] taught me a lot about UDP broadcasting and provided NymphCast with a reliable, cross-platform way to discover NymphCast receivers, clients and media servers on the same network. Much like my experiences with the Nodate STM32 embedded C++ project [5], none of that was wasted time or effort, as it all gave me the opportunity to nurture my skills as a software developer.


When I left my previous job at the end of 2017, I literally travelled around the world for job interviews. I clearly was making a solid enough impression during the early (remote) tests. Where things would fall apart was always with the in-person interviews, and when I looked at some short videos I made of myself in late 2019, I understood why.

The glassy, distant look in my eyes. The impression of someone who isn't really quite present in the here and now. Having had a few years now to work on this aspect, I think I'm doing much better now in that regard. As evidenced by the videos on my YouTube channel of the past years where I read the short stories I have written, I'm gradually learning to open up more and come to terms with the fact that I do have an actual body. Same with the way that I interact with people.


Of course, the past few years also have been a major confrontation with the traumatic experiences that I have been pushing ahead of me for many years now, including those involving my existence as an intersex person and what this fact means to me. I'd be a terrible liar if I said that any of this was easy to deal with, or that I'm done dealing with all of it.

What I do know is that I'm doing much better than I did a few years ago, both physically and mentally. Also that I'm now at a point where I seriously have to seek the next steps in fixing up my life. This one involving my career.


Although as stated the projects which I have tinkered with the past few years have been and continue to be interesting and useful, in the end they are hobby projects. Great additions for my CV [6], of course, but you don't build a career and livelihood on top of a few hobby projects unless you're incredibly lucky.

So, as a result I'll be actively seeking out new (remote) jobs the coming time that will allow me to expand my career and horizons, continuing my progress the past few years. No doubt it'll be anything but easy, what with the entire world currently (still) being on fire, but one has to start somewhere :)


Maya



[1] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphCast
[2] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphRPC
[3] https://github.com/MayaPosch/LockFreeRingBuffer
[4] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NyanSD
[5] https://github.com/MayaPosch/Nodate
[6] http://www.mayaposch.com/cv.php