An update on the Dream: life in flux

Muriel and I have been traipsing around the east coast, visiting friends and family for the last week in DC, Balto, Philly and now NYC. All great cities, and all great people. While catching up and going out, there has been the nagging reality of our life in absolute flux, with a ton of possible outcomes.

Many readers, but not all, probably know i have been interviewing for a couple of dream gigs over the last months. The first has been a long, long process with Google.org, working in their sustainability program. All told, I did about 10 interviews for that job, including 3 on campus visits at their HQs. This process started while we were back in South America, for instance I did phone interviews from Quito, Cartagena and Bogota. The second round of interviews was the oral assessment for the US Foreign Service (aka the diplomatic corps). This was a high stress day of interviews and other assessment tools in DC, which I completed on Tuesday. For a little extra bonus, Mu and I had planned to fly to India this Monday (Oct 7th) to start a 5 month tour of that sub-continent and other parts in Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

Throughout these interviews and prep, so many of you have been supportive. It has meant a ton, and helped me perform well in these high stakes environments. Thank you.

Well, over this last week I have gotten the results from these interviews and figured it would be easiest to share them on the blog instead of a ton of emails, texts and calls. There is some good news and some bad. I did not get the Google job, it came down to one other finalist and myself and they decided that the other person's experiences were a marginally better fit for the position. Very disappointing, but understandable. It truly was a great experience and an honor to be in the running.

On the much more positive side, I passed the Foreign Service oral assessment on Tuesday and received a conditional offer to join the Diplomatic corps. Still have to complete a background check and medical clearance, but the hard work is done. This is amazing news for us and we are so excited about the tangible possibility of the life and work that the Foreign Service offers.

Honestly, these last couple of months have been tough for me trying to navigate the interviews and preparations, all while seeing loved ones and getting after it in the outdoors. While hiking and driving and all those other fun things these last month, I have thought a lot about what has made it a bit exhausting and settled on two main ideas:

- Transparency: being open about what is going in our lives is one of the goals of this blog. That has led us to share stories along the road that might have gone by the wayside in another era. It has been such a joy for me when we visit friends and they recount a favorite post, which always seem to be different choices. Even back in at my last job, I was a tireless an advocate for being transparent about the work, both its successes and weaknesses, to the outside world. I believe in personal transparency. But in a job search, it might not be the best tactic, since so much of the outcome is out of your control.

At the end of the Foreign Service oral assessment, all of the people getting tested wait around to get told if they passed or failed the test. It is excruciating, so much nervous tension in a group of people who desperately want to succeed. Then, I took a long, solo walk down a office hallway to a closed door to hear the results. That was a long walk. You know what I thought in that hallway? Not the big picture, whether this would be our next step and the literally decades of life that could all trace back to the moment, oh no. I thought about how terrible I would feel not passing and then meeting friends for happy hour drinks, seeing people's supportive faces when I told them the news. For whatever reason, that is what I dreaded, not what failure would have meant to Mu and I.

This is a little microcosm of being transparent about all the interviews, jobs and possible outcomes. On the flip side, being transparent did yield so much support, which was amazing. Family and friends are the essence of a life well lived, in my book, and these last 2-3 months have shown that to be the case. But, sometimes I wished that we had kept this a little more private. I always had a nagging feeling of not wanting to disappoint. Perhaps transparency has a bit of an ugly belly when what you are sharing is rejection.

- Uncertainty: with all these interesting balls up in the air, our life these last couple of months has felt even more uncertain than usual since we left our jobs over a year ago. Instead of just uncertainty about the near or medium term, we have been talking and thinking a ton about our long term goals and opportunities. Having such divergent outcomes was tough, especially since all of them were so intriguing. Would we get on the plane to Asia? Did Mu need to find a job in Santa Cruz? Were we on track to get those coveted diplomatic passports? We never knew the answers to these questions, and many others, until this week. Now that we have resolutions on them, it feels good. We can take our objective situation and try to maximize, instead of trying (and sometimes failing) to embrace the uncertainty.

And that brings us back to India and Asia. You see, when we got to DC last Monday, Mu went to the India consulate and shockingly learned that we could not secure our visas there. Rather we needed to get that done in San Francisco, due to our home address. There was no time to get it done, since I needed my passport for the Oral Assessment and paper work in the event I passed. So, we had to bail on those plane tickets (not an issue, 100% refundable) and are now figuring out what our next travel plans entail. Literally, like today and tomorrow. The world is our Oyster, as long as British Airways has flights. Any recs for 3-4 months of travel, highly preferably places we have not been to thus far while living the dream?

We will keep you posted, and as always I would love to hear from you for congrats and support.

 

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