The last time I saw my mom she commented on how things like sci-fi and computers were boring and that those were things that men like to talk about. She was worried about me as I struggled in limbo after the bootcamp, unemployed and enduring interviews she could never know the half of. She pleaded with me to get a job as a barista or a dog walker maybe. I’m not sure if she didn’t believe in me or just plain didn’t understand white collar jobs beyond secretary. She certainly didn’t believe in herself. For a brief time she was a secretary for some oil and gas company or something. She learned how to type and run punch cards through the old computers. I’ll always wonder what got in the way of that. Did she think it was too boring? Or was it “too hard” causing her to give up?

I needed professional help and despite having many therapists in life and failed medication, I persisted. And so glad that I did. All it took for me was the right team and the will to get better at whatever cost. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a process, but I was healing at a great pace. Some time had passed and I was getting desperate for a job to get me out of the miserable search for that first tech job. I lowered my standards, looked at tech adjacent roles, and finally got one! The interview was terribly easy to pass and I was way overqualified for placing ad breaks for a video streaming company, but fuck it, I just needed an in. My first white collar job.