#9. Confessions of a Job Seeker – Oct. 2012
This series is based on a design journal that I kept between 09/12 – 02/13. New? Start here.

One day while walking through the Mission, my friend veered a sharp right into a gritty convenience store. I followed her inside to find her buying lottery tickets. I’d never played before, but it made me laugh so I went along with it. We were both in the middle of big transitions and in dire need of lightening things up a bit.

With our lottery tickets and hope in hand, we proceeded to take ourselves out for a Vietnamese lunch special where we spent the next hour discussing in detail what we’d do when we hit the jackpot. We’d go to India, of course, and I would crash her friend’s wedding. Then we’d treat ourselves to a nice, relaxing yoga retreat. It was going to be amazing.

While sadly neither of us won the lottery that day, we had a blast and it taught me a valuable lesson: It is so important to leave a little room to dream. Job search and change in general can be heavy. It can mean operating from a place of exhaustion and fear. When we dream, however, and when we play, we’re able to see the world differently. It is precisely in these moments that we begin to create the space for possibility.