I’m still looking for work but I’ve already conquered my hill

As a mid-career professional, searching for employment can be a slog. It involves the same routine tasks day in and day out. It’s nowhere near as interesting or rewarding as anything I’ve ever done to actually earn a paycheck. It’s not physically strenuous but it is emotionally draining.

It can also be dispiriting. Each time I get an email thanking me for applying but letting me know that they’ve chosen not to move forward with my application, I catch myself feeling like the whole project is a waste of my time and energy. It’s like trying to get to the top of a hill that I can never quite get to the top of, no matter how hard I try.

Losing my job meant losing our house. Thankfully we found a place to land nearby that meets my family’s needs. Our new home is about a half-mile away from a pretty steep hill that climbs about 365 feet over three-quarters of a mile. Just to stay sane and strong – and to give myself a sense of accomplishment – I have been trying to run all the way up that hill ever since we moved.

Below is a series of charts that depicts how it’s gone for me. In each chart, the blue line represents my pace. A higher line indicates a faster pace, so when the line drops precipitously, that means I’ve given up trying to run and I’ve switched to walking. The shaded area is the elevation of the hill. So how did I do?

Now, look what happens on Thursday, October 29th:

I did it! Within two months I went from my initial run of 0.9 miles to my final (so-far) triumph of 1.24 miles. I can’t tell you, dear reader, how good it made me feel to finally conquer that hill. But I probably don’t have to.

What does this have to do with my job search? Well, a few lessons come to mind:

1. I get to decide what’s important to me. My hill doesn’t have to be the same as yours. Nor does my conquering that hill have to look like your idea of what that looks like. This is especially important when it comes to career, since there are so many combining and competing cultural pressures about what people should be doing or how they should be doing it, based on age, gender, social class, family status, religion, or other factors.

These pressures feel as though they’re being imposed on me by others, but I’m really imposing them upon myself. I aspire to a certain kind of job, with a certain level of income, because I’ve internalized a set of assumptions, beliefs, values, and expectations that tell me that that’s what I should aspire to, and that anything less than that would be a betrayal of everything I hold dear.

2. Progress isn’t always – often? ever? – steady. I went from 0.9 to 0.99 miles in just four days. But then it took me 35 days to go from 0.99 to just 1.01 miles – and that was including beneficial breaks. The next eight days yielded an improvement of an additional .08 miles. Finally, in just seven days I catapulted from 1.09 to 1.24 miles. Not at all a straight line.

Success never seems to follow a simple linear formula. This is especially true in the labor market, whether we’re discussing searching for a particular job at one point in time, or one’s career over the long run. We have to reckon with what in the moment too often appears to be a lack of result for our effort.

3. I adjust my expectations based on feedback. It was perfectly reasonable – and acceptable – for me to conclude that I may not be physically capable of conquering the (actual) hill. That to me isn’t an admission of defeat but the acceptance of reality. Failure isn’t when I fall short of my goal, but rather when I never make the attempt to attain the goal that I’ve decided is important for me to work toward.

I’ve already had to do this several times in my current job search. I began this process first with an unreasonable expectation of (a) what my skills, training, and experience have prepared me for at this point in my career, and then (b) what opportunities are available to me in my local area in the middle of a pandemic. The exact nature of my job hill – and career hill, for that matter – is constantly being fine-tuned and subject to change, and that’s okay.

4. At the same time, I never give up trying to conquer my hill. I might take a break but I always come back to it. Sometimes a break is exactly what’s needed, so I don’t have to feel guilty. That time away isn’t wasted. I always come back stronger.

5. Lastly, letting go isn’t the same as giving up. There was something very liberating when I accepted the fact that I may never conquer the (physical) hill. That’s when I realized that that was the hill I needed to conquer: that acceptance. That was a realization that revolutionized my training and helped me with the final breakthrough that propelled me to even greater heights than I expected.

I do believe that we hold too tightly to our hills, or our preconceived ideas of what those hills are or should be. Again, these are internalizations of what we inherit from the various cultures we inhabit. There’s value in letting go – not giving up, but letting go. It’s in that looseness that we can find our breakthrough moments.

What’s your hill, dear reader, and what are you doing to conquer it? Does it have to do with job or career, a relationship, or some other daunting challenge in your life? Is your hill your own, or is it one that (you believe) has been imposed on you by others? I welcome your share in the comment box below.