Better days

I listened to Tim Ferriss podcast he recently recorded with David Blaine (God is Love). Here is the actual video from Tim’s new TV show – Fear(less) interviewing David Blaine which is of course equally good but there is some more different information.

It was a fascinating listen. But what made me really think just David’s way of life, his views on things, the way and the reasons for challenging himself.

David has an incredible memory, remembering names & people, situations, which I guess becomes part & parcel of being a magician.

He’s also talking about fasting which is something I’ve been recently looking into. I understand it is very healthy for you & your body as well as brain, visions, clarity, etc.

Lastly, David is also a great story-teller. I could listen to him for hours.

On a different note, Tim has also recently been on TedTalk talking about ‘Fear Setting‘. This is something that he does on a quarterly basis if not every month and he claims it helps him to make the right decision, and he thanks to this simple exercise for all his success. Instead of goal setting, you should instead focus on Fear setting.

3 pages:

Page 1

What if I … ?

1. Define – what is your worst fear?
2. Prevent – how can each be prevented?
3. Repair – call a friend for help, simply come up with some solution, seek help from variety of sources

Write anywhere between 10-20.

Page 2

What would be the benefits of an attempt or a partial success?

Page 3

The cost of inaction (financial, physical, emotional, etc.)

6 months

12 months

3 years

He left the talk with a couple of great quotes:

“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” Jerzy Gregorek (also one of Tim’s favorite people of all time).

“We often suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Cato younger (Stoicism)

Australian Art Pop Punk Rock

Today is the first Snap General Election day of 2017 in the UK. I’m saying first because the UK politics are just full of surprises and you never know what is sneaking just around the corner, whether that is Theresa May with a knife (she just as well come out of her shell) or just another snap election. Actually, I don’t know whether that is legally possible actually…

Anyway on a cheerier note:

I’ve been listening to some awesome tunes lately. I’ve come across Regurgitator back in early 2000 thanks to my ex. Mark who is from Perth, Australia. Originally born British his family moved down to Perth when he was still a toddler so he’s had a good few years down under enjoying some awesome (and also some shit) Australia music scene.

Regurgitator (wiki page) has a lot of good songs (if not all of them although some are clearly better than others!). Their lyrics are mostly beautiful taking the piss from the standard normal stupidity of life, tongue in cheek, romantic, to the point and just generally silly. This song rocks my heart at the moment:

But they have amazing rocking tunes such as this one:

And this one is just wicked:

At the same time emerged Spiderbait with the female vocalist Janet English. This song is full of happy and it always reminds me of my 2 trips to Australia and the beautiful ‘sunshine’:

And guess what, Janet English & Quan Yeomans (Regurgitator lead singer) have started going out in 1996 and created this baby – Happyland:

I can imagine this song can drive people mad hearing it more than once but still – what a beautiful creation.

This is not even a handful of the amazing stuff that came out of Australia back in the 90’s but still hat down to the Ozzie’s. Thank you for blessing us with good music!

Nirvana & Grunge

I think the best time 20th century ever had in music was the 90’s. Of course, this is questionable as each generation will be of absolutely different opinion. But for me, all my emotions are embodied in this decade of grunge, metal, and shitty pop.

My favorite band of all time? Well, there is so much good music but if I may say – Nirvana – Smells like teen spirit from the album Nevermind.

Off-fucking-course! I know it seems such a cliche nowadays as this song is the most popular from the album (and I love all of the songs from this album and In Utero as well as Bleach) but it still sounds so heavy, hearty, soulful, miserable and just soooo good to mosh to. You need to hear it loud tho! I mean really LOUD!

Part of me was destroyed when I heard the shocking news of Kurt blowing his brains out with the shotgun back in 1994. It’s been 23 years now. Fucking holy god of grunge. You died with him. All the other grunge bands that were left behind kind of left the scene and moved on.

But you left something behind. Grunge may be dead in a general sense. But not in my heart. Fuck you society. I’m wearing Doc’s with my tutu tomorrow.

Limbo

It’s been tricky few days..

I feel tired, exhausted from all the interviews, from constantly trying to stay positive, fight, and ultimately, from not succeeding.

I can do all these jobs, I can do anything I put my mind to. But the world of selling oneself doesn’t work in my favor. I’m not selling myself like a lot of people are. People who are doing amazing jobs at bullshitting their way through life. You have to be certain mold, certain color (and I don’t mean race now) and certain flavor. I’m totally out of this world by the look of it.

But if that is the case, tell me. If I’m not what you expect, doesn’t that make you too picky? Doesn’t that make you look for another Jane or Joe that already exists at your company? Because I don’t fit that profile?

I’m upset. And don’t try to tell me to get my shit together and really stand up and rise to it, and keep at it. I’ve fallen in love with jobs and companies more than once in the last 4 months, it has been an emotional rollercoaster which is morphing itself into a gluey, smelly and dirty downward spiral that just screams disappointment. Imagine yourself to fall in love with something so many times in such a short space of time..

Recruiters

This is just a personal opinion from my own experience, a personal observation of the interesting service some recruiters provide. Off course, I’m not the client and I don’t pay for their services but this shouldn’t stop them from treating everyone equally.

Like I mentioned in a previous post “I’ve decided to change my career“. I honestly think that this statement alone is scaring some of the recruiters away before I’m even able to elaborate on this. But truth to be said, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to explain my situation to most, I’ve even had a skype call with 1 or 2 and met a handful of them. Yes, meeting recruiters from agencies has become a serious problem. Not for me, but for them. I think I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve suggested I’ll come and meet them in person and they just shy away from the idea or don’t ever follow up on it.

Nevermind, water under the bridge.

I’ve gone for a job with a previously mention company. I really wanted that job. Oh, I loved it, I loved people, I felt like I belonged just by attending the interviews. It felt like it was meant to be. After my 1st interview I was under the impression there was 1 other person. But he/she was seen as too corporate. After chasing the recruiter for a 2nd interview date I finally got one, 2 weeks later with only 2 days to prepare. No problem. This is my job at the moment -Spend time preparing for interviews and I make sure I give it a due diligence. After chasing the recruiter again 2 days later for initial feedback she finally got back to me on a day 3. Via email with the below:

I am really sorry but unfortunately [said company] won’t be offering you the job. Feedback below.

We all really liked Romi and thought she was also a strong candidate. She is very personable and has a lot of potential however we feel she would require more development than X who was able to fully engage with the specifics of our business and who we believe has the confidence and the experience to hit the ground running. It is unfortunate that we do not have 2 positions available.

I am free this afternoon to talk through and discuss although the feedback is still very good. I will keep looking for you and let you know of anything else.

Speak later and I hope you are ok?

Off-course I wasn’t OK. I cried my eyes out. How could have this happened? I was heartbroken. That was 3 weeks ago.

Just to add salt to injury – last night I’ve come across a recommendation on LinkedIn from X to the said recruiter, 2 days after I found out the bad news, stating the following:

[The Said Recruiter] is the best recruitment consultant I have ever worked with. She worked with me to secure a great role with a company I really wanted to work for. She was attentive, diligent and worked really hard in my favour. Even when something didn’t go to plan and an issue occurred, [The Said Recruiter] sorted it out with professionalism and tact. I would highly recommend[The Said Recruiter] & [The Said Recruiter Firm] in finding your next role.

What the hell does that mean?? Why didn’t she work hard in my favor? What have I done to her? And what was the issue X is talking about? Does it have anything to do with me?

And as far as I am concerned I was the only person she was putting forward for this job.

I’ve had less than a handful of recruiters who put me forward for other jobs when I didn’t get through the first one. In fact, it was the same [The Said Recruiter] who put me forward for another role.

On the same day!

And her email started:

Hi Romi,

Hope you are having a lovely Tuesday?

No, as a matter of fact – I’m still very upset about not getting the job at [said company]..

And it ended with:

If you have now found a new job or are no longer looking, please let us know.

At this point, I’ve lost the hope to live and gave up on the search that day.

Meditation and early mornings

I’ve been meditating now almost 4 months. Observations so far are that it calms me down, kind of gives me a different perspective on things ahead. It gets rid of my anxiety and really seriously helps with the whole job hunting ups & downs. So far I’ve been doing this only 3-4 times a week but I think to truly benefit you need to find some time every day and ideally every day at the same time. Make it part of your routine.

So I think I’ll make it part of my morning routine. My mind should be fairly clean and uncorrupted with the day stuff. In fact, I think this is the perfect time for meditation.

As soon as I’m over with this nasty cough and cold, and get the annoying hay fever under control, I’m going to get back to getting up at 5am. All great people get up at 5am, apparently. I think it was Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tim Ferriss’ podcast who talked about it. He was so right, too. I’ve already done it last year and I must admit by the time the rest of the house wakes up it feels like you’ve already done half a day work, and spend some time on yourself. I woke up at 5am, spend 10 minutes getting a drink and generally wake up, then yoga and shower. It was invigorating.

So the plan for this year is to get up in the morning, work on my abs, practice some yoga and meditate, followed by rest of the usual morning routine.

30 day challenges

About a year ago I’ve met my now friend Emily. We met virtually whilst working on our first project during the Squared Online course I mentioned in a post from almost a year ago. From day 1 she did everything I did, it was as if we thought alike and at the same time and I remember thinking ‘argh, she really is annoying’. As we worked together on the project we really started to get on, we realized we had similar interests as we chatted outside of the project we worked on. I have learned a lot from Emily, her work ethic, organization, and determination was second to none. But what is special about her is her absolute keenness to learn. She listens and is incredibly supportive. She helped me with my job search on more than one occasion and she was instrumental introducing me to Affiliate marketing, an industry she’s been for over a decade.

Emily also constantly seeks new adventures and how to improve oneself. She is the one who introduced me to Tim Ferriss’ podcasts (more on that later). Whilst I’ve been studying with Squared I also started to watch Ted Talks, another thing I became fascinated with. One Ted talk really stuck out and that was by Matt Cutts – Try something new for 30 days. That really inspired me and got me thinking about doing something challenging. Something that would get me out of my comfort zone. Something that would make me think differently, change of mindset. It has become apparent that Emily has been doing some of the 30-day challenges with her friends! So we decided to do our first joint one. Get up at 5am and do yoga for at least 30 minutes everyday for 30 days. I don’t get up early easily but I do love yoga whereas Emily can get up early but hasn’t done yoga in her life.

Since then we’ve done 30 day planks, 30 day meditation, I’m now on 30 day blogging challenge. Although I did missed one yesterday but that is somewhat tricky spending a day out with the family and suffering with a cold. That is my crapy excuse.

Since then I meditate (not every day, but regularly enough to get going), I’ll be going back to getting up early and doing yoga first thing in the morning (but I practice yoga 2-4 times a week), I also want to do a 30 day running challenge and have just finished 30 day abs challenge which I would like to carry on with starting again tomorrow.

Doing all these challenges is making me feel more adventurous, confident, accomplished, just generally stronger person in pursuing the things I want to do. I would strongly recommend it to anyone. Get out there out of your comfort zone and do something that you would never really like to do, or something you’d really love to do but never had time for. You’ll be amazed how much you can do, how much you can prioritise one thing over another and find what is more important for you and what makes you happy.

 

Friday feeling & Yoga

Despite me not working at the moment, I’m still enjoying the Friday feeling. And today is a special day, we are going to Brighton for the day and evening, to see a film, then eat steak and see Shobaleader One at Concord2. Here is their recording from the Boiler room from yesterday, sounds fun!

Would like to post a quick update on job hunting. I have agreed to start with Deckchair.com from Monday. I need to set up myself as my own company but we are good to go from Monday. I love what they do. They provide high-quality webcams in all kinds of locations around the world which helps the hotels and towns to showcase the beauty of their city’s / resorts. Some of the images are truly awesome. And my job will be going through all the pictures and posting them on social networks. Fun!

I’ve also received an amazing call yesterday. After 3 months pursuing recruitment manager for an interview with Rakuten Marketing, I’ve finally managed to get through. And not via the recruiter either.. More on this to follow in a due course. But this was such a soul soothing occurrence, it has lifted all my spirits up yesterday.

I also enjoy practicing yoga. I would absolutely love to become a teacher one day with my own studio. At the moment I try to practice 3 times a week although would really prefer practicing every day. I use Yogaia platform to practice with. You can either join a live class with your camera on, or just chose a recorded session of your liking. The variety of classes at your level is immense. And I must say some of the teachers are true gems. For example Maxine Barratt, she explains the moves really well and you can tell she is really passionate about what she does.

Yogaia is also great platform supporting charities and right now until the end of March they are donating £1  from each live-attended class to Help Refugees via their #chooselove campaign. I usually chose recorded classes but on Wednesday I joined my 1st live class with Shanine Collinson (who is another one of my favorite teachers).

 

I usually indulge in a lovely warm cup of 100% Matcha (that I get from Amazon) and 20 minutes meditation afterward. It is definitely an uplifting experience and I thoroughly recommend it.

Have a lovely start of the weekend all 🙂

Small part-time job :)

Today I’m mainly tired. I’ve been up with my son who came to my bed at 2.30am. As he does every night, however, last night I’ve had my daughter sleeping in my bed, too. So that made it for him really difficult because there was not the usual half bed for himself to sleep. So he kept being up and sniffling, saying he has ‘nose’, meaning I-have-a-snot-coming-out-of-my-nose-please-wipe-it-for-me-mom. The poor little sausage. I took him back to his bed about 4 times. The 4th time I was really pissed off with him, I grabbed him and just put him to his bed, covered him with his blanket, and didn’t say a peep. He didn’t come back after that. That was just before 5am. Great, only 1 more hour to sleep before I have to wake up. And what a great hour it was (sarcasm).. I dreamt about living in a small village somewhere and being attacked by terrorists. I kept trying to keep Vinnie safe but you know these little creatures, they just don’t stay still… And then I woke up. Tired, terrified, and guilty for chucking him out of my bed.

Anyway, on a more positive note, I have been contacted by Chevy, owner of a company called Deckchair.com (these guys are worth checking out by the way). I’ve met him at one of those Brighton Digital Catapult Centre events about a year ago. Then there were talks about Internet of things, etc. We just got chatting and stayed connected on LinkedIn ever since. There was a possibility for me to work with these guys about a year ago but I felt it wasn’t the right fit at the time so I declined the offer. But as we are connected on LinkedIn I kept my eyes out on their latest escapades and liked most of their posts from fabulous locations around the world. Just stunning photos & time-laps’.

So Chevy got in contact with me yesterday on LinkedIn offering me a few hours a week job managing their social accounts and helping with their new webcam aggregation. We met today for a coffee and discussed the opportunity in more detail and I’m hired on a temporary basis. All I need to do is set up myself as self-employed and we are good to go. I’m not getting paid huge amount but it is keeping my feet in the play pool and I’m gaining experience managing social accounts for a very interesting business. I am a little bit excited :).

I now have a 2nd interview with Proporta next week. iCrossing have also now come back to me and I have an interview with them about potential Account Manager role based between London & Brighton, an exact date for the interview is to be finalized, but most likely to be sometime next week.

I now also have an interview with Mastered.com, again date TBC. These guys are providing career accelerator programs in fashion & beauty which is right up my street. They are a small start-up backed up by major fashion designers & makeup artists. And they are hiring Beauty Marketing Manager. I also got this interview through someone I know, who as a matter of fact got in contact with me to alert me this position has become available!!!

I am a little bit more excited about that, too.

 

So all misery aside, today is not that bad after all.

Talent 2017 & applying for jobs

 

Last week I decided to attend Talent 2017 show with a newly found friend (daughter friend’s mom) who is also currently looking for work having just finished her contract with a fab digital agency in London.

Talent 2017 show is run by Wired Sussex in collaboration with many major digital Brighton agencies & platforms and it is about meeting new & young talent (me being 35 doesn’t fit that mold but this was something I realized a few days after the event) for the digital world of Brighton. I mean – I would absolutely kill to work for a digital agency in Brighton. Why? Because I am only 35! Still young, full of energy and ideas to share with a few years of commercial experience up my sleeve. I would love to be exposed to all the different digital channels, bouncing some cleverness of my colleagues and just stay on top of the latest in the world of tech. I love this field! I know – I sound desperate…

It was a really beautiful day, sunny, warm, I could just wear my dress with short sleeve without any cardi or jacket. The sun was really scorching and you could see a heatwave over the horizon. First serious Spring day in Brighton. The Event was in Jurys Inn which is based right on the sea-front (perfect for lunch time break of Fish & Chips and sit down on the beach).

Anyway, during the day I met JellyFish, iCrossing, SiteVisibility, Oban International, Fresh Egg, The Student Room. It was such a great high energy day. I’ve handed my CV to all of these, connected with them on LinkedIn since and have also followed up with everyone at least once.

The one that really stuck to mind was SiteVisibility. I’ve applied for AM role with them a week prior to the event and I was determined to make an introduction and follow up on my application. And I didn’t hang around. My friend pointed to the direction of the owner of SV. So I waited for him to finish his meeting and asked him for a few minutes to chat. The good news is he remembered my application and CV and seemed happy to meet me, took me down to his stand to meet his employees and my potential new boss. I was really pleased about that because I have finally made a little breakthrough in the process. We discussed my application in detail, my training and the manager Scott then advised he’ll be in touch.

The bad news was the vacancy has been put on hold and they are currently looking at recruiting some more junior roles. So back to square one again.

 

I’ve had my CV assessed by a few random people now. The feedback I’m getting – superb and impressive CV. I keep tweaking it, making some of the tasks more obvious so they respond to the job roles I’m applying for.

I’ve also sent my application to a friend of mine who is also in the industry and they advised that my application may sound a bit desperate and I should be straight to the point as to WHAT I ACTUALLY WANT!

Another advice from another friend was that this industry is cut throat where people are not necessarily very good at what they are doing but they instead bullshit their way through.

That makes me really sad.

 

I think it is time for me to re-asses what I really want.