First Rejection

My resume is updated and I started applying for new jobs last week. And promptly got my first rejection note. Oddly enough, it didn’t really bother me. The role was one I could have done well, but it wasn’t really my dream job. And really, I don’t know that I should settle for just “a new job.”

At this point in my career, I really hope I don’t need to settle. I want to work at a company that really values their employees and where I can use my experience/skills to make a difference. I am good at what I do – although at times like these, it isn’t always easy to remember.

I’m reading a book titled YOU are a BADASS: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. I cannot recommend it enough. I’m not usually a self-help book kind of person – but this book is really helping me put some things about myself into perspective. I’ve never been good at self-promoting but maybe that needs to change.

For all of you that I have worked with in the past and have sent me messages over the last couple of weeks – even when we haven’t spoken in FOREVER, I cannot tell you how much I have appreciated hearing from you. The sympathy and encouragement are overwhelming – thank you!

And last but not least – if you work in HR or know someone who does, know that the rejection notes are the nicest thing you can do for an applicant if you won’t be moving forward with them. Ghosting your applicants just leaves them hanging. The roller coaster of emotions your applicants are going through is hard enough – so send the note so they know where they stand OK?

Thursday Throwback

Part of processing being laid off last week has had me thinking about when I was at my happiest in my career. The thinking being, to shake off the sadness over the Walgreens lay off and find what makes me happy again.

I think my happiest years career-wise were the years I spent at Midas. Big brand – tiny marketing department. It was my first client-side job and while I was hired because of my media and field marketing experience, the tiny size of the marketing team let me get involved in almost all aspects of marketing. Boundary lines between roles and even departments in the company were blurry. There weren’t silos.

Even though Midas wasn’t always a well managed corporation during my tenure, in the later years under our last CEO, we flourished. We got serious about focus, used hard data to guide decisions and put our franchisees/customers first. And it really paid off with 8 straight quarters of amazing growth. Maybe it paid off too well since it resulted in the company being bought out – but I’m thinking I need to get back to that kind of place. Encouragement for out of the box thinking, no silos, customer first. Now I just need to figure out if that kind of place still exists – and how to get my foot in the door when I find it!

Walking to Wellness

So it’s Wellness Wednesday and later I’ll be strapping on my walking shoes to celebrate. It’s really no secret that walking is a great form of exercise. I took up walking kind of seriously in August when I participated in a fundraising challenge from the American Cancer Society. The challenge was to walk 2 miles a day, every day of August for a total of 62 miles. I blew it out of the water averaging 4.2 miles a day for the month according to my Apple Watch.

One of my favorite places to walk

All the walking not only raised money for ACS, but I actually started losing my pandemic weight! Today, I’m down 10 full pounds from the top of my weight (I’m not saying where I started OK?) and I found other benefits too. My Apple Watch alerted me to a lower resting heart rate which is an indicator of better heart health and cardiovascular fitness. I dropped around 6 beats/minute over the course of the month!

I’m also sleeping better. I’ve always been a light sleeper and stress/worry only makes it worse. At the risk of sounding all weird, the walks have given me a way to empty out my head. Being outside and walking hard with my headphones pouring mood appropriate music into my head is just soothing in a way I cannot describe. And given the events of the last week, my walks have helped me put things into perspective and get into a good mental place.

So take a break – go for a walk and see if a few miles will help you too! Want some more info on walking and wellness? Check out these links:

It’s To Do Tuesday!

I’m making to-do lists today. I love to make lists to keep me organized – and I love ticking off completed items even more! There is usually a post-it note with the day’s list of things to do stuck to my desk right by the keyboard. But what about days like today when everything is a bit overwhelming?

Well apparently, I’m not the only one that loves lists – I did a quick Google search on to-do lists and got over 25 BILLION results! Visual lists, priority lists, shareable lists – you name it, there’s a template or a process for it. But I’m not going to recommend anything – you do you and find what works. I like a post-it note – or several post-its for different task groups but that might not work for everyone.

Here’s a few interesting links if you want to switch up your to-do list game:

Now please excuse me – I have a list to make of all the things I need to get in order to start my job search. And a grocery list for Thanksgiving. And a Christmas list! Gotta run!

WELCOME BACK!

Yup – it’s been a LONG time since I’ve written anything here. What can I say? Life happened. I changed jobs, we had a pandemic and I was just so busy with other things that I just let Learn-or-Do fade into the background. But last week, life happened again – I lost my job in a large corporate layoff at Walgreens and so Learning and Doing has become very important again.

So today, before do the knee-jerk thing of just madly starting to apply to any job that sounds vaguely interesting, I’m taking a beat. I’m going to breathe, give my emotions a little time to settle (because this was so unexpected and left my old team in a such a hard place) and then carefully consider what I want to do.

There was a time when I though Lebron James was arrogant when he talked about where he wanted to take his services when he left the Cleveland Chevaliers, but I get it now. See you all tomorrow!

First Christmas Tree

I bought my first Christmas tree over 20 years ago – it’s a 4′ pencil tree that is currently decorated and waitng for it’s timer to go off so it will light up my living room.    I love my tree – this year it has 300 white lights (I’m a sucker for white lights), gold and white ribbon and gold bells.  And of course my Santa and Mrs. Santa bells.

In college, my roommates and I made our Christmas tree one year – it was a huge paper cone we taped to the wall and decorated.  I still laugh thinking about that “tree”!

rockefeller tree.jpgThe first tree at Rockefeller Center in New York was put up by construction workers in 1931 – and decorated with tin cans, paper garland and cranberries.  Since then, the tree has gotten bigger but the tradition remains.

Do you ever wonder why we have the tradition of Christmas trees?  Well wonder no more – click on these links and learn about the history of the Christmas tree!

Random Things

randomI have no throwback today.  But I do have a random list generator!  This is kind of fun – take a peek at randomlists.com.  If you’ve got some time on your hands you don’t know what to do with, you can generate all kinds of random lists here – than make it a game with yourself to associate them.

Or generate a random list of songs and make a playlist on your favorite music platform.  Generate a random list of movies and fill in your Netflix queue.  Fire up your imagination and give it a try!

And I’m betting something on one of your random lists will spark a throwback memory – making this post full circle.  You’re welcome!