I quit my job & found FULFILLMENT 4 Careers at 30 - Interior Design, Software Developer, Youtube

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. I'm Caroline, and today's video is gonna be a little bit different. In this video, I'm gonna be talking about how I switched careers three times, how I got into a tech career with no prior experience, how I started a career in interior design with no previous experience, and how I started on YouTube. Usually on this channel, I share interior design content and vlog, lifestyle content, lighthearted stuff. This is not gonna be like that. It's gonna get dark, and then it's gonna get light again, but there will be dark times, much like a career change, one might say. So brace yourself emotionally. We're gonna get into some real ----. First, a couple disclaimers. What this video is not. This video is not instructions on how you should live your life. I'm just a random dude off the street who grabbed a camera and started sharing about my life on the internet, and I've received so many questions about the multiple careers that I have had. I'm just answering the question about what worked for me. I'm certainly not a career counselor, and I'm not even an expert in any one of these fields, but that's the whole point. You don't have to be an expert in something to start learning about it and to start making money off of it. Yes, I have made money off of each of these different careers, and that is not why I feel like it's been a success, because Lord knows you can make a lot of money in a career and be unhappy as hell. Money is not everything. It does make some things possible. Money is nice. We're gonna talk about money, but what I'm really touting here is fulfillment. I haven't always been a happy person. I have known depression pretty intimately, so to be able to say that I feel extremely fulfilled in my life right now is wild, and it makes me a little uncomfortable, but it is the truth, and it makes me wanna shout it from the rooftops. There are some things I'm gonna say in this video, some personal opinions I will share that are gonna make people angry. Now, like all opinions and all advice you will ever receive in your life, it's autobiographical, and I respect that you may disagree with some of the things I say. I'm just gonna share what I know. You will notice they are very unrelated fields that I have changed from. Even if you don't relate to any one of those fields, the point is that you can make a switch, and I think the tenets that I used in order to make those changes successfully can apply to anyone looking to make a career change. And a final heads up, I would predict that I'm going to get a little bit heated at parts in this video. I am a little bit already. It has been said once or twice by loved ones who know me that I might have an anger problem. I would not call it a problem. The nuts had no salt. They had no salt on. What is the point? Bitch, this isn't about you. Why would this be about you? All the people with their stupid cards. Stop the texting. What is wrong with these guys? They're just raw nuts. Don't ever text me ever again. You think I don't know your tricks, bitch? It's not about you. You're the most boring person I know. You're not tricking me, you idiot. Are you God's gift to the earth? You're not. You're a piece of crap. That's not gonna work for me. We're gonna have a bad day. I wouldn't call it a problem. An anger hobby, maybe? An anger side hustle, even? But I am gonna get heated. And that's because I'm extremely passionate about this topic. And I have a lot of feelings about the failings of the educational system in America. And I just have a lot of feelings in general. So as long as you're down with that, let's keep going. I posted on Instagram asking you guys what questions and topics you're interested in for this video. So I'm gonna do my best to respond to as many as I can. What is the timeline of your jobs? I'm gonna talk about the timeline of my jobs because this is gonna make, hopefully make everything else make sense. Real quick summary. Gosh, okay. I've had a lot of jobs. Not all of them were careers. The first career that I had was as an actor. I went to NYU Tisch for their acting program, lived and worked in New York as an actor for eight years. It was my passion. It was my identity. It was my purpose for living. I eventually got very burned out in an acting career that did not take off the way that I needed it to. And after eight years, I decided to quit. I eventually decided to move into a career in tech. Quit acting when I was 27. That was, what year was that? What year is it now? The summer of 2018. By February 2019, I had my first job in tech doing software development and UX design. By September 2020, I did my first YouTube video. After a little while, that took off and is another income for me now, as well as interior design. They're sort of related, but they're also separate businesses. There's part of my YouTube that is not interior design. There's part of my interior design business that is not on YouTube and it's just with clients outside of it. By spring 2021, I was working for a boutique interior design business as a designer for their remote projects and taking on clients of my own for my own business, continuing with YouTube and continuing with my tech job. Currently, I am doing all three. I work 30 hours in my tech job. That is a big win, which I will talk to you about as well in the video. And then in the rest of my hours, I work on YouTube videos and my interior design business. Is it important to love what you do for a living? I would adjust what is important there. I think it is important to find fulfillment of some kind in what you do for money. There's not only one way to be fulfilled. I have a friend who is an accountant. She loves her job. Did she grow up saying I'm passionate about accounting? I don't think so. I guess I haven't asked her, but I don't think so. But she loves her job. She loves her job because she's really good at it. It feels very rewarding to be good at her work, to be respected for her work, to get things done and to feel extremely proficient. That is an extremely rewarding way to engage with a job. Okay, my biggest belief in life these days, my motto is diversified fulfillment. The way that you would financially diversify your investments, you diversify where your fulfillment comes from in your life. When I was an actor, I had invested my entire identity and all of my fulfillment and purpose in acting. All of my joy, all of my happiness in a single investment. As far as investments go, you would never invest all of your money. You would never put all of your money in one investment. And guess what? It didn't give me the returns I needed. And here's the truth. Even if you have a blossoming, beautiful career, people get laid off. People lose their careers at 40, at 50, it happens. And it's not always in your control. We're about to get dark a little bit. If all of your fulfillment comes from your romantic relationship, comes from your family, comes only from your friends, I derive huge fulfillment from my relationships, but they cannot be the only thing that brings me joy. Because I also cannot control other people. I cannot control how they are able to be present in my life. People will need to ebb and flow in your life. You need to have more of your own stability. That to me is not a depressing, dark idea. That to me is acknowledging the reality of life, the way that things change. All things change, all things end. And they are replaced by great new things. But if you are not prepared to accept that change will happen, things will come in and out of your life at different times, you're not gonna be a happy girl. So part of finding that fulfilling work is getting to know yourself very well. What energizes you? Not what energizes someone else in the same job. What energizes you? And guess what? That thing is gonna change throughout life. It's not static. What fulfills you at 30 will not fulfill you at 50, nor 60, nor 80. It's going to evolve. We are all constantly recalibrating to have a fulfilling life that is well lived. Another key and very difficult task is being able to separate what it says about you to stay in that career and what it actually feels like for you to live in that career. What does it say about me if I get to tell people I'm a prestigious doctor? What do I think that means about me? Newsflash, it doesn't mean anything. Meaning is fabricated. We make it up. But getting caught up in what you think it says about you, you're gonna have a really hard time making truly fulfilling moves in your life if you are caught up in what it says about you. If you can differentiate that from, okay, so yeah, on paper, it looks really prestigious and really cool, and it feels nice to be able to tell people I'm a surgeon, but on the day-to-day, I hate keeping up with the medical board. I hate dealing with insurance. I hate the paperwork. Whatever the thing is, you need to get very introspective and very honest because no one else lives in your career, only you do. Maybe you get to hear an offhand comment about, oh, she does this, she does that, and those comments hurt, but then they go back to living their life, and you're the one who has to stay in the job. What do you want years and decades of your life to look like in that job? What do you want it to feel like? How much time to give a job before deciding if it's right for you? Okay, I think it's a different question for job and career. Any job, you're gonna feel pretty useless and incompetent at for the first three or four months, probably. Of course, it's gonna depend on the job and the career and the field and the industry, but I would say I think you have a pretty good idea if a job is a good fit for you within six or nine months. Other great advice I've heard about quitting jobs, do not quit on a bad day. Don't quit on the worst day. You have a terrible day, okay. See it through until you have a kind of average day. If you want to quit on a really bad day and it is the right call for you, you will still want to quit on the sort of okay day. Then you really know there's something going on there. And that gives you the gift of being able to quit, walk out the door and not regret, oh gosh, did I just make a rash decision? Did I make that decision in an emotional state? You can know that you are in a stable state, seeing clearly, see it through, quit on the good day. Speaking of quitting, I'm gonna go on a little rant here for a moment about the importance of quitting the right things. Today's American hustle culture loves to circulate this quote about never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up. If I could murder a quote, I would. To me, this is such poison. This is such a dangerous and actually like self-abusing notion to put into people's heads that quitting just anything and everything, just quitting as a concept is always a bad idea. It's a very dangerous notion in my mind. No one has ever started a business, started a passion project, started a family even, started a relationship without quitting a bunch of other stuff. Life is all about quitting at the right times, at the right moments. It is also about perseverance. And the truth is it's really hard to distinguish am I being a quitter or am I quitting the right thing? Have I given something a really good shot? The way I knew that was that I had nothing left to give. Every time I got a new audition in acting, every time I got a new role even, I didn't even want to go. I had nothing left to give in me. But in the future, I would like to be able to figure this out for myself before reaching that extreme point of burnout. Managing others' response and opinions to your change, especially negative ones. That's a tough one. Here's the truth. You're gonna get a lot of opinions, a lot of input. So when you're hearing advice and input and opinions, consider the source. I ask myself, do I want the kind of fulfillment and happiness that this person has? Do I value the same things as them? Do they seem happy with their life? I am shocked by the number of miserable people who like to tell you how to get where they got. Why would I want your life? I'm confused. You're unhappy all the time, right? Okay, consider the source. Parents, love parents. Parents do a very good job of looking out for your safety and well-being. Parental input will likely be a tricky one. They want you to have the salary because they want you to be able to afford to put them in a home one day. JK, that's a joke. But they are coming at it with a very different sense of security and protectiveness. Take the opinion with a grain of salt. Your friends. You know that some of your friends are able to look out for your best interests. Some of your friends are only able to reflect on what your career change says about them. First of all, it doesn't say anything about them, but some people will take it personally. You gotta take it all into account. Hear their opinion or block it out. You can respect it. Say, I hear you. Got it. That sounds cool. Exploring options. How to explore a new career before making the big I'm quitting leap. Even growing up as a kid, we don't have a lot of exposure. I personally did not have much exposure at all to what the career options are out there. Doctor, lawyer. What is a project manager? I understand the individual words in that title, but what on earth does it mean? What does it do? There's so many other jobs to hold. So, chapstick. The best thing you can do, I think, is to talk to people you know. Ask a lot of questions. Your friends, to your parents' friends, to your colleagues' friends. Just ask people about what they do. It's crazy the number of things people do. Jobs are ridiculous. And not just what they do, do they like it? Not just if they like it, but why do they like it? Because Sally might love being a lawyer because she gets to fight with people all day. Joe might hate being a lawyer for those very reasons. Or you need to figure out if they value the same things that you value, and if they find those values in that career. I got exposed to tech because one of my comedy performer partners at the time was a software engineer at Venmo. I got to know the office. I got to meet her coworkers. And I knew her, and she was incredibly intelligent, incredibly creative, interesting person. And I just liked the world of it. I liked the people. I thought they were smart without being pretentious. I thought they were creative without trying too hard to be interesting. They were reasonable and humble. And I thought, damn, if I could learn to do this, if I could learn to code, I think I would like this world. So I figured out, okay, I think this coding thing is something I would want to try out and look into. Before I even applied to the school, I spent a whole summer waitressing and working my day jobs, and then I would go home in the evenings and I would code. There are free coding programs. Code Academy is the one I mostly used. It's amazing, it's free, they have great curriculums. And I did it for like a summer to make sure that I actually enjoyed it. And I do enjoy coding. It is like, like it's not, the career is not a passion, but there is something that I do really enjoy. It's a puzzle, you're problem solving. It's not quite mathematical, but it's finite and structured like math is. It's not nebulous. The creative field that I love are nebulous. There's not necessarily right or wrong answers, and that's lovely, and sometimes it's also draining. For my day job, I knew I wanted something where there were right answers and there were wrong answers. And coding is really satisfying to me in that way. Other reason that I really considered exploring tech was because I was so determined not to go back to a university and get another degree, get a ton of student debt. Listen, as I said, I'm not gonna tell you what to do in this video. This might be the one exception. If you are considering making a career change, if I were you, I would do everything in my power not to get student debt. The number of people I know who are stuck in a job they hate because they have to pay off the loans that they took out to work a job that they hate, what kind of insanity is that? It is a trap. Do not do it if you can do it. Do the research. This will depend on the field, of course. It's gonna depend, I need a drink. Some fields are going to require you to get a higher degree. Some will not. And you can't take the university's words for which ones are which because guess what? They want your tuition. I'm about to say some things that are gonna make some people angry right now. So feel free to leave the video at any time if you're getting as emotional as I am. I was talking to my sister about this very topic. My sister is an extremely accomplished journalist. She is a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. She got a huge book deal and she is now writing a book. Extremely accomplished, incredibly bright woman, Elizabeth Winkler. Look her up, stay tuned for her book. It's gonna be amazing. Journalist at the Wall Street Journal. Before she had this career, she was at a point once where she was considering, do I need to go and get a MFA in journalism? It sounds like something people do, I guess. It is a damn scam. This MA did not even exist a couple of decades ago. It was invented by the universities because they knew people would pay them for it if they made promises about what that degree would bring them. Okay, I got so heated ranting about this that I forgot to actually land the plane on my actual point, which is my sister opted out of a journalism degree and it had no bearing whatsoever on her journalism career. Meanwhile, she has watched peers pursue the journalism degree and not reaped the benefits proportionate to that cost. Surely, yes, there are some MBA programs whose networking opportunities or corporate relationships alone make the degree worthwhile. But there are also plenty of degrees for which you can go into debt without landing you in a better place once you're out on the job hunt. Just because the degree exists does not mean you must get it. But if you were like me and you were like, I want to avoid the student loans at all costs, there is another way. What I loved about tech, there are programs called coding bootcamps. This is what I did. I did a five-month intensive, 40 hours of class time per week, learning to code, and there's bootcamps for a lot of other tech fields now too. The program I went through is the Flatiron School. They have a couple locations, other great coding bootcamps, General Assembly. There are lots, look them up, but you need to go to a well-respected one. A lot of these programs have really good scholarships for women and minorities, especially because they are so underrepresented in the field. But even so, if you can't get a scholarship, it is a much more affordable degree and you do not need to go get a whole computer science degree. Is a computer science degree helpful for certain levels, for getting certain jobs, for getting a higher starting salary? For sure. It's not a pointless degree. That is not what I'm saying. Do you need to go and get a higher degree? No, it is not necessary. There are options for that and there are benefits to that, but it is not necessary. And that was a huge factor to me. What I also loved about the program that I chose, the Flatiron has a, this is not sponsored by them at all. I just loved the Flatiron. They had a tuition back guarantee. If you did not land your full-time paying job six months after graduating, you got your full tuition back. And they never had to pay back because they had such great career support services. They are motivated to get you into that job. So the money back guarantee was a huge deal to me. Okay, now we're gonna get into the really salacious stuff. This is when people are gonna get mad at me. Whether you need to get degrees and certification for interior design. I was asking this very question when I was exploring interior design. I did a lot of Googling. I did a lot of reading and I did a lot of talking to professionals in the field. There were two people in particular that I consulted on this subject. An interior designer who had her own boutique business. I'm gonna talk about her more in a second. One was an architect. He was in his, I guess, 50s or 60s, had an entire career as an architect and designer. I sat down and consulted with him what it would take for me to be NCIDQ certified. NCIDQ is the interior design certification. And here's the deal. A certification like the NCIDQ certification, if you read even off their own website, is mostly about A, education, yes, you learn a lot, and B, credibility. Credibility, which for many, many decades, credibility came from your certification in interior design. However, today we have something called Instagram. If you're just trying to run your own boutique business and just get clients, you're not trying to get hired at a firm, if you have a portfolio, the portfolio will speak for itself. I bet most designers you follow, those designers mostly get their clients off of their social media, off of their website, from word of mouth. So the certification is nice, but it is not what's gonna get you clients. It depends what your goal is with interior design. Maybe you do need to get to the certification if you want to have certain opportunities or to be hired by certain firms. Would I know more and have more technical expertise if I'd gotten the certification? Absolutely. If I wanted to apply to a large design firm, would I likely need the certification? Absolutely. There is a time and place for that, and there's lots of people who that is great for, but that was not my goal. Can I just decide tomorrow that I want to start performing surgeries without a degree? I sure hope not. Can I just become a lawyer by Googling? No, I cannot. Can I just become an architect tomorrow and start building homes? No, I cannot. Why are these fields different and distinguished from coding, from interior design? Being a lawyer, being a doctor, being an architect, these are regulated at a different level in order to protect people, because if you are not safe and regulated in those fields, you can hurt people. I also don't want you to be upset if you got the certification. Possibly that was the right call for you, and I will acknowledge you absolutely know more than I know. I am certain that you do. That is not what I'm debating here. When I sat down with the architect, he laid out the hours that I would have to work and the certification and the schooling I have to do and pay for just to get a job working in a basement of a large firm sorting fabric samples in a room somewhere. It was going to take several years, and while we had that conversation, I was already being paid by clients to design their spaces. So I had the input from the architect who ultimately was just like, I don't think this is worth your time, and I said, I agree. Now, if you don't go the certification route, you do still need to do your own continuous education. Luckily, the internet exists. Most of this information is available online, and if you care about the topic, it will not feel like work for you to learn about it. For interior design, I am reading about it all the time, reading blogs, reading books, taking courses, learning about building codes, because I just enjoy it. It doesn't feel like work. Books, designers you admire, researching, not just reading. Shout to Brian, my love, who watches this vlog, apparently. I love you, Brian, and your husband. I was scrolling through Instagram one day, and I found Emily May, a local designer in Covington, Kentucky. Her boutique interior design business is housed by Emily May. Please look her up. I didn't know her. I found her on Instagram. I was in love with her work. I think this one photo in particular made me fall in love with her, and I love how she spoke about design and how she thought about her business. I fell in love with her. I said, I have to talk to this woman. So I reached out to her. I wrote her an email. I kind of just shared about where I was in my journey. I actually don't remember whether she had her certification or not, but I remember that she advised me that she didn't think it was worth it. I eventually started designing some of her remote projects, doing the design on my computer and sending them a design package. No, I didn't have formal education or formal experience, but I worked very intentionally to present myself with total professionalism, and also I did have a sort of portfolio. I had built up my work on YouTube, and not only did that document the actual design work, but I think part of what happened is that my videos also relayed my sensibility and my personality. People want to hire people that they would enjoy working with. I currently, in my tech job, have to conduct interviews for new people coming onto the team. I do not want to hire someone with an attitude. I do not want to work with that person. Why would I want to train someone with a bad attitude? When you're interviewing for a job or you're talking to a possible mentor, be the person that makes their day better. Be the person that makes their job easier. How to overcome the stigma, both external and internal of being viewed and viewing yourself as a quitter and such. I do understand this very much. When I quit acting, I was overcome with shame. It is how everybody knew me. That's the girl who's pursuing acting. She wants to be an actor. She's gone to do the acting thing. She's been in New York doing the acting thing, and then I quit. I felt so much shame. I felt so much failure, and I also felt the truth of the unhappiness I felt, and that was more important to me to try and correct. At the end of the day, you're never gonna convince everybody else, but if you believe in it and you know that your reasons are true, return to those reasons. Return to the why. Make a cheat sheet of all the ways that you felt miserable, all the things you wanted to change and needed to change for your own well-being, for the quality of your life. If you're quitting it for honest reasons and you're being honest with yourself, this shouldn't be a big problem for you. Wow, emotions. What was your **** it, I'm doing it moment? When do you know it's time to change your job? As I said, I was unhappy in acting for quite a number of years, and the **** it moment was very, very distinct. I had booked a commercial. It was a small Coke commercial. By all intents and purposes, this is a huge win. Booking the commercial, that is the trophy. You're getting to do the work. I should've been over the moon. I went to the commercial shoot. It was an overnight shoot, and the entire time, I just wanted to go home, and this light bulb went off in my head, and I thought, oh my God, if I don't want to be here doing this thing now, this thing that was supposed to be the prize, then I really don't like what I'm doing anymore, and that was the last job I ever worked. I emailed my agent the next day. I would say that if you find the unhappiness and the weight of that job carrying into your evening, your weekends, your relationships, it sounds like it's time to make a change. It's not gonna be a quick fix. It's gonna take time. Most likely, in any big change, you are trading one set of challenges for a new set of challenges, and the key really is finding which challenges are more tolerable to you. It's very unlikely that it's just gonna be easy breezy going. I cannot say that that has been the case at any point. When I made the change from acting into tech, learning to code was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. I experienced panic attacks for the first time in my life. It did not come naturally to me. I would say that everyone else in the program where I was learning to code, I felt like they all had an interest in tech, and I truly did not. In some ways, I would say I don't even respect technology. It's annoying to me, but I forced myself through it for other logistical reasons. It was tough, and it was worth it to me. When I transitioned into interior design, it wasn't technically difficult in the way that learning to code was difficult, but what was difficult, what remains difficult today, is that I am balancing three jobs, really. Oftentimes, I am working 16-hour days. It is not easy right now, but the new challenge of having to work a lot of hours for a limited period of time in my life is a challenge that is more tolerable to me than the challenge of having no creative outlet. We're just trading challenges. Which one can you tolerate in your life right now? When to know if it's worth taking a pay cut for a change-up. That's a really tough one. The salary trap. It's an intentional trap, right? They lay these prizes and bonuses and promotions in front of you for a reason, because they know that after a certain number of years in any job, you'll probably be bored. You'll probably wake up one day and be like, what is this? What even is the point of this? So they give you more money so that you don't think too hard about it. Money is great. I love money. Would I deny someone giving me a big pile of money? I certainly would not, but it's not all the things that make me happy. Is it worth being lower on the bottom of a ladder that you want to climb or halfway up a ladder you don't care about? Guess what? On the ladder you don't care about, as you climb higher, you're still not gonna care about it. That's just gonna get worse. And you're probably gonna get more down about it through your life as you get older, as you watch your youth pass you by, as you watch your nimble years pass you by, and you say, wow, I've really been doing this for a long time and I've hated it the whole time. Or get on the bottom of a ladder that you want to climb and oh my God, the thrill of progressing on a ladder you want to climb almost weighs out the pay cut you will take. And of course you have to be able to financially and logistically support that. A big freedom that I have when I made these career changes, I do not have children. I get to live a very selfish life. Parents and caretakers who make these career changes support those people. They're doing a very difficult thing, but it is also doable. Everybody has the logistics and the circumstances of their life that they need to factor in. Student loans, paying rent, supporting family, whatever it is, that is gonna be tailored to you and you have to bring those factors into your life. Okay, I need a sweater. I got chili. I also went to make myself a drink right now because I'm getting emotional. What did I want to say? Back to the issue of not caring what other people think. People comment a lot that I seem like I don't care what people think. I certainly do. I would say I probably care more than the average person what other people think of me. However, I will no longer let my life be ruled by my fear of what other people think of me. I'm still afraid. I'm afraid all the time, okay? I'm scared of almost everyone and everything, but I try my very best to not let that fear dictate my life decisions. When I was quitting acting, I was definitely afraid of what people would say about me, what they would think about me, and ultimately I decided it's my life and I'm the only one that has to live it. And ultimately what they say behind my back or even to my face might hurt for a moment, but that's just a moment. I have to then go and live entire days in my life. So I want my life to feel good the way I want it to feel. When I first started making YouTube videos, I was terrified. I was honestly embarrassed. I started watching YouTube and thought about making YouTube videos for like a year before I worked up the courage to do it. I was terrified of what other actors I knew would say about me behind my back. People are 100% out there making fun of me. I could probably even name to you the people who I bet make fun of me behind my back. And also what they say and what they think truly has no effect on my day to day. The thoughts they're having in their private life or the conversations they have privately, they affect my life in no way. Ultimately, once you realize that the things that other people say about you don't actually affect you at all, you're free to make whatever life choice you want. I will also say there's something about hitting a sort of desperation point. When I first started making YouTube videos, I was at an extraordinarily low and lonely point in my life. I had moved to a new state. I had a couple of lovely friends, but really I didn't have the social support that I needed. I was trying really hard to make friends in this new city and it just wasn't happening for me. I was extremely lonely. I was watching YouTube all the time and had this huge fear of what people would think of me. And then one day I woke up and I said, wait, I don't have any friends. I can't lose any friends if I don't have any. What are they gonna still not talk to me if I make YouTube videos? Who cares? So that's a real place of freedom. There was also a freedom that came with failing at the first thing I wanted to do, failing at acting. After that, **** it, I'll make a YouTube video, try to get into interior design, ask for 30 hours a week at my job. It's about having the boldness to go for it. I think that was what I really lacked in acting. I was so scared. I wanted it to work out so badly and I was so precious about everything that it was actually kind of hard for me to put myself out there and sell myself. And now that I've lost that, I'm ruthless about it. I will go for anything because who cares if I don't get it? I'll try something else. There is a freedom with getting at a low point in your life. There is a freedom there. When you feel like you have very little, that you are willing to take those risks. You see what living a life without taking the risks, without going for those things, you see how little it's gotten you. You see how unhappy it has made you. So why not try something different? How to get better work-life balance. I think you said your tech job is 30 hours a week. My dream, it is a dream, but I don't work 30 hours a week. So this is an area that I will admit I'm struggling in right now. I really believe in work-life balance. I think it's something that I'm violating right now. Yes, I work 30 hours a week with my tech job and I've actually condensed that into three days a week. So I work three 10-hour days, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I work eight to six. And then the other four days of the week are mine to do with as I please. I am usually working every single one of those days. Most days I work at least from 8 a.m. to midnight. And I usually make it to the gym and sometimes we'll have dinner with a friend, but I work every night at least till midnight and it is not uncommon for me to stay up till 3 a.m. I would say I have three or four days a week where I'm working 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. This is not good, it is not sustainable, and it worries me quite a bit because I know that working those hours, A, I'm probably gonna get sick. I'm chugging vitamin C packets multiple times a day because I know my body's about to break down. And what gives me more anxiety is the ways that I know I'm at risk for falling short in the ways I show up to my relationships in my life. I have so little spare time for my friends and for my family and loved ones, and it's stressing me out. I have lost friends before in my life, probably the greatest pains I've been through, and I'm determined to never do that again. So this is why my overworking right now is extremely worrisome to me, not just because of how it's depleting me, but because I will do anything to keep the important relationships in my life now. So that's something I'm currently working on. I'm workshopping it, but I'm working on it. So I wanna be transparent about that. But people are always asking me how I got to the 30 hours a week with my tech job. Well, this is a tough one. It's not gonna be possible at every company. It's not. I know lots of companies who give a really hard time to people who go part-time or who cut down their hours. I happen to work for a company, a very small agency, web design agency. It's about maybe eight to 10 people now, and they are some of the most wonderful people I think that I'll ever work with or know in my life. It's funny that you, the person who asked this used the word negotiating. I didn't even think of it as negotiating. Like, I wasn't, it just felt like talking. I was talking to them as a human, and I talked honestly about where I was and what felt difficult for me, the honest truth of what I was struggling with and what I needed in my life and the reasons I wanted to stay with the company. And luckily, I was talking to really kind, generous, understanding people who were open to hearing that and looking to find ways to make it work. So when you're having these conversations with your boss, there's no guarantee it will work out, but I would always recommend, like, talk to them as a human. Approach them as a human. Negotiating doesn't mean you need to, like, hardball somebody. Approach them with respect, with kindness, with flexibility and being reasonable and understanding what it will cost them and maybe the value you can offer in exchange. These things, I think, are what need to come into any negotiation. And ultimately, like, your company doesn't want to have to replace you, most likely, unless you suck, which sometimes we suck. How can we support others going through these big changes? I love that question. What a thoughtful question. It's really hard to watch someone you love taking big risks and venturing into the unknown. You become the parent. You just want them to be safe and secure and stable and just get a salary and don't make me worry about it. It's really hard to not put that stress, your own stress, your own anxiety onto them. I feel that anxiety when I see the ones I love making those changes. And what I recenter on, personally, is to focus not on the results they're reaping because results can take time. Most businesses only turn a profit after, like, five years, right? Like, change takes time. Don't look just for, like, the results. Look at what they're putting out and their values. It is easy to me to support someone with a good work ethic, with perseverance, grit, and humility, who is working hard at something. That person will never be too ---- out of luck. I'm not saying you're gonna end up rich just by having those values. There's no guarantee. But if you are willing to work hard and humble yourself when things don't happen instantly, you will be okay. Those, to me, are values that are very easy to support. What was in my drink? I just swallowed something weird. It's, like, kind of in my nose. Someone wants to talk about living to work versus working to live. Get out of my nose. Well, I'm kind of in peril of violating that value right now. So, I mean, I'm working probably too much, but I don't wanna be. This is important to me because I feel like I grew up around a lot of people who had these really illustrious careers, adults that had illustrious careers, and most of them were miserable. And that was very clear to me from a young age. I grew up in D.C. These are the people who are here, like, lots of lawyers and doctors and legislators and whatever. Is that a word? Legislators? Or is it just legislator-ture? Legislators. That's a word. What's wrong with me? And most of them were miserable. And they got to 65 and retired and said, okay, now I'm ready to start living and enjoying my life. At 65, you're about to get cancer. And then the ones who didn't, didn't even know how to start enjoying their life. And that was such a cautionary tale to me. I do not want to get to 65 to decide I'm ready to start enjoying my life. That sounds like a nightmare. No thank you. We could all die any day. I keep saying that. I don't know why. I've just always been very aware of death. And it doesn't feel scary to me. It feels like important information that helps me make decisions to make my life more fulfilling. I would consider myself really a pretty joyful person. And it's not because I don't know depression. It is actually because I've spent a lot of time in the darkness that I've used that to inform decisions about what I want my life to look like. If that makes sense. Okay, I'm hot again. I just talked so much, like my back hurts. But if this video like felt valuable to you guys in any way, or there's a young person you know who would find it valuable, definitely feel free to share it with them. This video, again, is not instructions for what you should do with your life. I certainly can't tell you that, and nobody else can. Only you can answer that for yourself. But my intention with this video is to support you as I would want to support any friend in taking the space to define for themselves what matters. And to tell you that it is possible. I'm 30 years old. I'm still making changes every day. I haven't done anything special. I just got really honest with myself about what mattered in my life to make it a life well lived, and what I was willing to give to give it a shot. Like, comment, subscribe. It makes my day. It makes my life possible. And I appreciate it. I think I'll probably do more videos. Like if I want to do one about getting into YouTube. Leave any more questions that you have below. I don't want to make this video too, too long. Like, subscribe, do the little alert bell. Most of my videos aren't like this. They're usually, I mean, they're ranty and rambly, but most of my videos are about interior design stuff, mental health, vlog, lifestyle, whatever. It's a little bit of everything. Sorry that I got so worked up for so much of it. It's because I really care. I just like want to get my experience out there. Because there's an end. Like, there is another side to get to. There is another place of fulfillment. And I feel very passionate about helping people get to that place. So I hope this was of value to you. And I'll see you around the channel soon. Bye-bye.