In an effort to not be homeless, I’ve taken a part-time job - the kind that we all do in high school or college. Going into the interview and the manager saying, “Wait you have a master’s degree…” and then looking at me like, please explain why you’re here - yeah that sucked.
Death of my pride aside, I’m hustling. Having three jobs - this part-time job, teaching part-time and freelancing - is making me productive. It gives me motivation when I go through interviews too.
I’ve completed the most intense hiring process for a documentarian position at a television station. It’s taken me months of various interview stages to get to the point of being “hired” as a freelancer.
Really exciting place to be, obviously, but the station isn’t ready to start work on the show and doesn’t know if they’ll hire me to work. I’ve just been cleared or designated by the company as “hirable” and now they have the green light to contract me.
I’ve also been talking to the person who’d be my supervisor and he said I’m basically runner-up for the full-time position that needs to be filled in January. It’s a little punch in the gut, but I’m also pleasantly surprised that I’m this close to being the best fit for a video job. I’m focusing on that and hoping they call me.
I went back and watched my documentary again because I wanted to see if I could identify one or more things that would make me an attractive candidate, especially if that was the only work sample of mine they would have seen.
I remembered how much I liked creating this documentary. It was super stressful but I’m proud of the result. I will always see all the stuff I wish I’d done differently in the shooting and the editing, but I’m OK with sending this out to represent who I am as a storyteller.
With free time I’ve been creating short videos and photos. I’ll need to get those online. I had a hard drive mishap and am still catching up.
Other interviews come up every now and then too - and have my eye on something big that just got posted today.
The grind never stops. I won’t stop until I’m working full-time as a journalist.