I decided to be kind to myself

It's April, suddenly it became very warm. Yesterday was still chilly. Summer is around the corner, I will be stepping out of the gate of university soon, one month and 10 days to be exact.

The nice weather let me feel somehow uplifted. I decided to give myself a break tonight, sort out something that I never had a chance to clean up. I decided not to blindly submit job applications to every job post online. I downloaded a nice looking editor (if you are interested, it's called PileMd). And I sat in the couch, listening to Spotify while writing this post.

Sometimes I feel I am too harsh to myself. Shh, don't laugh, I know you are harsh to yourself too. We are very good at feeling sympathy for other people, telling them "oh, poor buddy, I feel you", but not the same to ourselves. We are afraid of complaining about something, because once we do that, someone will definitely yell at you, "what is that? That's nothing. I have been through something far worse". Well, that might certainly right. After all, most of us aren't the most miserable people in the world and most of us aren't exhausting ourselves 24/7 chasing the goal.

It was until my last year of college that I started to realize, getting a good GPA isn't that important (although a lot of people might argue about that). We as students, have limited time to handle all the courses. And not all of them should be treated equally. As an Asian student, I was taught to focus on school. We are very good at meet the given requirement perfectly. Over the four years, I never cut any class due to my laziness (though I certainly wouldn't recommend so either). I tried very hard to get a good grade on each class. As of today, my GPA isn't that bad, 3.87 out of 4. But one month into the graduation, I feel I didn't live my college life to the fullest. I missed a lot of local meet ups about some interesting topics, because, I am a student, I have class to attend. I missed a lot of Hackathons, because, I am a student, I have homework to catch up during weekends. I didn't spend enough time with clubs, meeting interesting people, participating in fun activities, because, I am a student, and activities don't count toward GPA. So on and so forth.

Job search was very stressful and even though I knew it was the same for a lot of my friends (except some lucky/smart ones). I came from a not so affluent family. My family are counting on me make a fortune in order to settle down in America. I feel a great responsibility to support my family as they did to me since I was young. I found myself spending a lot of time practicing interview techniques instead of learning useful technologies.

Maybe for a lot of people, life doesn't give them many choices. Call me too naive or selfish, but I feel I have some time to spare, to improve myself, to set my career on the right track. This however, requires support from families and friends, but most importantly, it requires patience and confidence from myself. One reason I am writing this post is to remind myself, and my fellow job seekers, to be kind to ourselves. This includes, feeling stressful, still finding time to do things we enjoy; defeated again and again, still remembering to buy ourselves a ice cream, and pad on our back, cheering ourselves up; desperately looking for recognition, still knowing our worth and not settling for opportunities that don't contribute to our personal growth.

So I have decided to take good care of myself. I will do the following from now on.

I will not hesitate on giving myself good food, I am a young adult, and I need nutrition.

I will allocate time more on the things that are important to me. Time management doesn't mean not wasting time. It means knowing what to sacrifice.

I will set aside some time for my personal enrichment every day.

I will spend more time with the people important to me (like you).

I will listen to music more.

That's it for now. Can't have too many goals at once, otherwise my single core brain cannot process. Thanks for staying to the end with me, wish you a nice day and remember to treat yourself well too.