Wandering Lights

For a few weeks, I was distracted with the thought of going back to the daily grind. I opened LinkedIn. The past, corporate me and its cobweb of loose connections came into light, full of dust, stared back at me. My past self positioned her torso about 30 degrees away from the camera. She had a bright smile and sparkly eyes soaked in artificial confidence and empty ambition.

“You have no idea what’s about to hit you, do you?” I thought to myself.

I dreaded the thought of needing to update it. Bad enough to ask LLMs to rewrite some of the already cringeworthy descriptions into something even more wince-inducing. My feed was inundated with heartfelt advice on how to frame yourself as AI-forward in this golden era we are in. Everyone had their 2-cents. Why doesn’t someone collect everyone’s 2-cents and turn it into a buck? Wait, there’s probably an AI agent already doing that.

I applied for one role. The appeal of this particular one was the location. I could bike there under 20 minutes. But after going through the excruciating process of applying for one, it was too easy to get distracted with more. The allure of a regular cadence of life that someone else established for you (or forced upon you) was hard to resist.

It’s been a month, and there’s nothing to show for, as expected. Nonetheless, it was a good exercise to put myself through. Because I realized it no longer gave me panic attacks to dig through the memories of my 6 years at that wild place.

Maybe, I’m finally ready to write about it.