Latest / He's Hot but Something's Off... / HHBSO 35: My 2023 Recap & 2024 Outlook

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HHBSO 35: My 2023 Recap & 2024 Outlook · He's Hot but Something's Off...

0:01
Hello, welcome to He's Hot. But something's off with me.
0:03
Just Joey, tea allergy season is in full swing, and I know that
0:10
because I'm sneezing all the time now.
0:13
There's a difference between when you need to sneeze because
0:16
you're allergic to something and when you need to sneeze because
0:19
you have a cold or a flu or COVID.
0:23
So annoying when you have hay fever, which is what I have.
0:26
Just no pollen allergies. Because it's not that I sneeze
0:32
that often, it's that most of the day, if your allergies are
0:37
not under control, you're on the verge of sneezing.
0:40
And that is. It's not painful, but it's the
0:43
most distracting thing in the world.
0:45
It's when you feel it in your nose that a sneeze is about to
0:49
come. It's like edging for your nose
0:54
for like hours on end throughout the day, but like, not in a
0:59
pleasure, full way. It's.
1:01
I don't know where that analogy came from, but it's the most
1:03
annoying. Remember one year, it was the
1:06
spring that I was in London for three months and I was working
1:11
in the office one afternoon and just out of nowhere that
1:16
particular afternoon, the allergies just hit like, really
1:19
bad. And I remember I literally
1:23
wanted to rip my eyeballs out. They were so itchy.
1:27
Like, I had to, like, leave work, go to the nearest
1:33
pharmacy, it's like across the street or something, and get eye
1:36
drops. It was that bad.
1:37
I had to leave work, get eye drops, put them in my eyes, and
1:40
then go back. It was really, really bad.
1:42
But yeah, that's how I know when algae season is here.
1:45
It's when I start having the symptoms.
1:49
So it's this itchy knows like you're always on the verge of
1:53
sneezing, but it doesn't usually come.
1:56
Sometimes it does but it it's just so annoying.
1:58
So anyways, January is usually kind of early.
2:02
I usually expect it sometime in January or February.
2:05
So this year is January, so it's mid January right now.
2:09
So anyways, after last week's episode, at the end I alluded to
2:15
wanting to do a reflection on my 2023 and maybe what my outlook
2:22
is for 2024, so let's dive right into that.
2:27
So 2023, it's really weird for me because COVID
2:34
notwithstanding, because COVID just caught everyone by surprise
2:38
when it hit in 2020. But COVID aside, my life has
2:43
been very kind of, sort of regular even since my childhood
2:49
days. Because when you're a kid,
2:53
you're a teenager, You just do the typical kids stuff.
2:57
Well, at least I did the typical kids stuff.
2:59
Like you just went to school, 94 or whatever.
3:03
You came home, you did homework, some cartoons, some playtime,
3:06
had dinner, whatever. That was like all very normal
3:10
for me. I've always lived in a city for
3:13
most of my childhood. Some way shape or form, some
3:18
cities bigger than the other ones.
3:19
But it was very, very regular, very typical, very normal,
3:24
right? Go to school.
3:26
And it was just just school. Like elementary school, middle
3:29
school, high school. Very, very normal.
3:32
I didn't know that I was gay until I was 12.
3:39
So that's when I I didn't understand what being gay was.
3:42
I'm not even sure I knew what the knew that the word existed,
3:47
but that's when I started having gay feelings, boy and boy
3:50
feelings, because when I was 12. So that is maybe a little
3:58
something extra that gay people carry with them if they kind of
4:03
discover that they are not like everyone else during their
4:07
childhoods. So for me, like throughout like
4:10
middle school, high school, that was like the extra, like secret
4:14
because I was closeted until I was like 16 or 17.
4:21
And then I started telling some friends at some friends that
4:26
were during my high school times, during my high school
4:30
years. Some of them were supportive.
4:33
Some of them were not that they weren't cool with it, but they
4:42
they weren't cool with it. But they didn't didn't retaliate
4:45
or like do anything bad to me per SE.
4:48
So yeah. And then after high school went
4:51
to college did my did six years in college.
4:53
Actually by college I didn't really have a life.
5:00
Honestly. I remember the first year in
5:02
College in in high school I got pretty good grades like B plus
5:07
mostly as you know you have the get pretty decent grades to get
5:11
into college and I wanted to go into engineering.
5:15
I wanted to go to engineering school and major in engineering
5:17
in college, which I did. But you know to be in the
5:21
sciences and stuff you need to have good grades in like math
5:24
and physics and chemistry and blah blah blah.
5:27
All that stuff in your senior year in high school, it's in
5:29
Canada, thank God in Canada it's not as competitive.
5:34
Maybe it is today, but when I went to college and I was
5:38
applying for college, it wasn't as competitive as I think what
5:41
in the States would be for like the nicer, more prestigious,
5:45
like whatever Ivy League schools where you have to have like
5:49
straight A pluses or something and you have to do well on your
5:53
Sats and you have to have extracurriculars and all this
5:56
other extra crap. In Canada, you didn't need to do
5:59
any of that. I didn't go to like a super
6:00
fancy. There's still like Harvard,
6:03
Stanford equivalent in Canada. I guess Canada has some
6:10
noteworthy schools, so I went to UBC, which is the like the the,
6:14
the, the big one in Vancouver on the West Coast.
6:17
But there's University of Waterloo.
6:20
Is is is kind of has a name for itself.
6:24
There's University of Toronto, a huge school in Toronto obviously
6:29
and then there's McGill. So there's like some kind of
6:33
sort of prestigious ish schools in Canada.
6:35
But there's nothing in Canada. I think that's on par with like
6:39
Harvard or MIT or whatever that has like that type of
6:43
recognition worldwide basically as being like that elite level.
6:48
So anyways, I just needed good grades.
6:51
I didn't have any extracurriculars or any of that
6:53
other stuff. I just had good grades and I got
6:56
into UBC luckily. But for six years, my six years
6:59
in college, I had no social life whatsoever.
7:02
It was just so much studying and I started working.
7:07
I was 16. My first job was a job that I
7:10
didn't ask for or want or expected.
7:14
So my brother-in-law just randomly got me a job as a part
7:17
time busboy at a friend's restaurant.
7:22
So I would go, it's a 16 and in the summertime it's like July
7:28
and August. Do my summer break and it would
7:31
be two nights a week. It's like Tuesday, Wednesday.
7:35
It's like the quiet nights. And when I say quiet, it was
7:37
quiet. I don't know if this restaurant
7:39
ever made a profit. It was so, so, so quiet.
7:42
The Tuesdays and Wednesdays that I worked there and on like a
7:47
busy night we would see like 3 tables.
7:50
There'd be like 3 tables of people.
7:51
There'd be a couple of, like, delivery orders and takeouts and
7:53
that kind of stuff, but thank God it was never busy.
7:58
But it was a remotely busy restaurant.
8:00
I would have just ruined them financially and like,
8:04
operationally in just every which way.
8:06
I'm just not good. I'm not good at carrying drinks
8:09
around plates of food. You should see me try to carry
8:14
like just a cup of water in like, an airport lounge.
8:17
That's like the scenario where these days I need to carry a
8:21
glass or a cup of liquid from like one place to another and
8:25
I'm likely to spill it. I don't have this problem at
8:27
home because I don't fill things all the way up to the top and I
8:32
have cups and mugs that are like a large size, not this like tiny
8:37
little petite thing that most people use.
8:40
I have like I have glassware and bowls and stuff that I know
8:43
works for me and I never fill things up to the top.
8:47
So when I'm taking something from like the kitchen to the
8:50
dining room, I don't have this problem.
8:51
Whenever I'm in an airport lounge, I for whatever reason, I
8:55
feel like I need to fill it up to the top or something.
8:57
I remember I was in a a Haneda airport in Tokyo coming back
9:02
from New Year's and I they had this like beef broth that was
9:07
really good. And they had these tiny little
9:11
bowls for the soup. They're they're kind of sort of
9:14
shallow. It's very like spill prone and I
9:18
remember like walking from the at the the buffet area back to
9:23
where I was sitting, which is like on the other side of the
9:25
lounge and it was like it was it.
9:31
It's comical if you were to have witnessed me just like holding
9:35
this tiny little cup like it was a bomb that's about to go off if
9:39
I took one wrong move and just walking like slow.
9:43
This is the slowest I've ever walked and I used to walk
9:45
really, really fast. But anyways, total tangent.
9:48
What is it like? College.
9:50
Yes, college. Anyways, I didn't do anything
9:53
for six years. I was just so concerned about
9:57
not flunking the first one or two years.
9:59
I remember the very first year, first year engineering, and
10:04
we're just doing it was math 102, which is integral calculus,
10:09
which is something I kind of sort of learned in high school
10:13
because I did intro to calculus in high school, which is not
10:18
mandatory, but I was trying to like get a little ahead and
10:21
prepare myself. So I got 38% on the 1st midterm,
10:27
38% on the 2nd midterm, which means I was going into the
10:31
final, fully flunking it. And two things needed to go
10:35
right for me. One, I need to completely ace
10:38
the final exam. Second, I needed them to
10:41
basically, oh, what's the word when they move everybody's
10:47
grades? Like, there's this word for it.
10:51
Anyways, the thing that professors do when they, like,
10:54
shift everyone's grades according to like a bell curve
10:56
or like they move everybody up, they forgot the term.
10:59
It's on the tip of my tongue. But anyways, yeah, those two
11:02
things needed to happen to me for me to not flunk that not
11:06
funk calculus in the first year, like you need to know like basic
11:09
calculus. It wasn't hard calculus.
11:11
I needed to pass calculus to like I it it was it was in it
11:15
was one of those mandatory courses where I cannot funk.
11:17
If I funk it then I can't get into second year.
11:19
So 38% first midterm, 38% second midterm.
11:23
I remember like, OK, I'm really fucking this up.
11:28
I have to like absolutely ace the final for this course.
11:33
And I did ace it. I think my final, I think my
11:37
final actual score was like 80 something percent was or like
11:43
even like, yeah, it was like 80 something percent was like my
11:45
final grade for the whole course.
11:46
But going into the final exam with 38% scaling, scaling the
11:52
grades, I think that's the word. Yeah.
11:53
Basically I did ace the exam basically.
11:56
I remember I studied super, super hard.
11:58
I was super whatever. Like OK, like I can't feel like
12:02
this. I can't feel like this.
12:03
I have to pass this. I studied super, super hard for
12:06
that exam. That's the hardest I've studied
12:07
for any exam ever. And I remember getting the
12:13
grades back. I'm like, wow, they must, they
12:15
must have scaled everybody by, like, a lot.
12:18
I don't know how, how many other people might have funked it or
12:21
went into the final exam flunking it, but I got like 80
12:23
something percent. I was like, OK, I must have ace.
12:26
I must have ace. The exam I passed.
12:28
OK, awesome. I did have a good time in
12:32
college, kind of. But I didn't do any of the
12:36
typical, like, American College stuff.
12:40
I just went to school. I had part time job.
12:42
Oh, that's where I got sidetracked.
12:43
I had, I was talking about having a part time job.
12:46
I had a part time job on campus with the IT help desk that they
12:50
had. So this would be like doing
12:52
phone calls and tickets and things like that.
12:55
E-mail Technical Support for students, staff and faculty for
12:59
their emails or their Internet access or people that were
13:03
living in residence on campus, their Internet stuff.
13:07
So that's what I did the helpdesk for.
13:09
It was actually really a great group of people that I've worked
13:11
with there. Yeah, so it was working on
13:16
campus, going to lectures on campus or going to labs on
13:20
campus, going to tutorials on campus.
13:23
And otherwise I would just have to be studying because it's
13:29
difficult. It's not the easiest thing to do
13:31
an engineering degree, so I needed to study.
13:34
So it consumed my entire six years.
13:38
So the degree it's a bachelor's degree is 4 years.
13:41
But I did the coop program or it's what they call an
13:43
internship. Did an internship, basically did
13:45
the internship program and that tacks on one extra year and you
13:50
don't really have like your summers off.
13:52
If you have a regular four year degree, you're not doing the
13:55
coop program. You would be two semesters,
14:00
which is 8 months, the Tri semester system and then maybe
14:04
for like the summer semester like May, June, July, August,
14:08
you would it would just be like a summer break, right?
14:11
You could do that if you did it. If you can kind of get all your
14:14
credits and your courses in within two semesters then you
14:17
could kind of sort of have like the summer off and like do
14:19
whatever, right? But I didn't do that.
14:22
I did the Co-op program, the internship, which means when
14:25
you're not in school that semester, you're working that
14:29
semester. So I didn't have any, like I
14:31
didn't have any. There's no summer break, there's
14:34
no semesters off. It's you're working full time in
14:37
the internship or you're going to school full time.
14:40
And I was also doing a part time on campus job, so I only needed
14:44
to do 2 coop or two internship jobs, 2 internship assignments,
14:49
but I decided to do 3 and the internship assignments were
14:52
always eight months a piece. So add it all up.
14:58
So it was basically six years continuously either doing an
15:03
internship somewhere. I end up doing 3 internships and
15:06
then or doing the school so and I just didn't feel like I had
15:12
time to do anything else. I didn't have time to like be
15:15
gay. I didn't have time to like you
15:18
know, socialize or like do all the crazy fun stuff that
15:22
American College students seems to be doing like spring break.
15:25
I didn't have spring break, I was studying bitch.
15:27
So yeah, but that hard work kind of paid off.
15:35
I mean, the college degree, honestly, it's just a piece of
15:38
paper. Honestly, it could have been.
15:41
I could have gotten almost any other type of degree.
15:44
And I don't think it would have changed my career trajectory
15:49
because I don't think my college degree got me my first job out
15:53
of college, which was with Google.
15:56
It was the work experience that I had and also the internship
16:00
that I had. So I was at this IT help desk
16:04
part time on campus during school semesters and then all my
16:09
almost all my internships were doing IT support internally for
16:14
like a corporation in their office, right?
16:17
So it's like directly relevant, no work experience.
16:21
I've been kind of building this resume while I was in college.
16:24
That got me an IT support position internally at Google.
16:27
So yeah, I think that my up until when I graduated college,
16:34
I was 24. When I graduated college,
16:36
because I spent six years there, it was just very blah.
16:40
It was just very normal, very nothing noteworthy, nothing
16:44
special. Happened.
16:46
Didn't like travel, barely didn't travel.
16:49
Basically just didn't travel. Didn't really go anywhere.
16:52
Didn't do anything particularly fun.
16:54
It was just, I was living at home the entire time, just going
16:57
to school, just studying, just, you know, or working.
17:01
So I mean, it did pay off, right?
17:04
I'm, I'm glad I did that. I I do wish that I cut myself a
17:08
little bit of slack and had a little bit of fun during
17:10
college, but I don't think I would have changed anything.
17:13
But anyways, now I'm 25 and I got this great job at Google.
17:20
This was 2010. So this just coming off of you
17:23
know, the the Great Recession in like 2008, 2009, that's that was
17:29
when it was just hard to find a job, any job, for a lot of
17:33
people, especially no new grads coming out of college.
17:36
I remember a lot of my college friends near the end of my
17:40
degree, a lot of them were just looking into grad school because
17:43
the job market was just so bleak.
17:44
So I'm very, I'm very thankful. Grateful that you know I got
17:49
this like Google gig kind of something I wanted to do.
17:52
It was this like awesome start to my like adult life basically
17:58
out of college. And that's when I actually
18:02
started to kind of like enjoy myself a little bit.
18:05
My first couple of years when I was on my own.
18:10
It's like, OK, I have this. My first full time job.
18:13
It's with fucking Google. I'm, I moved to California,
18:18
which I've always kind of had a thing for California when I was
18:20
growing up. I thought like, oh, California
18:22
is such a cool place to live. So everything was happening.
18:28
And for like the first couple years it was, it was really
18:31
nice. It was pleasant.
18:32
You know, I was in Silicon Valley, which is like the
18:34
suburbs. But a couple years later, I
18:37
started meeting, you know, like start meeting more and more
18:41
people that were like in the Bay Area, not just within work, not
18:45
just work. People start to like kind of
18:47
know more people outside. And that's when I got into like
18:50
the traveling, the circuit parties start to actually
18:53
network more with other gay guys and traveling more.
19:00
So I'm meeting more people just outside of California, outside
19:03
of the US as well. So that's when things got more
19:08
interesting, life got a little more interesting.
19:10
You know, I was making decent money.
19:13
I was still climbing the career ladder and I, you know, meeting
19:19
so many more people, you know, at that time.
19:23
So, so about like 2015, 2016, that's when I started traveling
19:26
more, started to experience more things, more cultures, and
19:30
that's when I met so many more people.
19:33
And that was kind of like a bit of a turning point in my life,
19:36
kind of going from just very normal, almost like a straight
19:41
kind of lifestyle to like rainbows and parties everywhere
19:44
type of a thing. So until last year and during
19:51
COVID, I got, I didn't know this, it crept out on me, but I
19:55
got a bit burnt out from work. So I've always been instilled
19:59
that, oh, you need to the climb the career ladder was something
20:03
that was somehow instilled in me from like.
20:06
My parents to just like society in general, I guess in like a
20:10
very subliminal way. But I was slowly, slowly burning
20:18
out. And there's a whole bunch of
20:19
different factors. If you go listen to like my very
20:21
first or second podcast, when I started this podcast seven or
20:25
eight months ago, whenever it was, I actually talked more
20:28
about how work was burning me out at that time.
20:33
But not to rehash that story, I quit my job in last December,
20:39
December 2022, and I've been thinking about quitting for a
20:42
while. So for 2023 was the first year
20:45
in my life where it didn't look like any other year again.
20:50
You know, 2020 and COVID, that aside, right?
20:54
Because I didn't have AI, didn't have a 95 job.
20:57
I wasn't doing what was expected of me.
21:00
Basically getting you look at someone's life during their
21:03
first 30 some odd years and be like, Oh yeah, OK, You went to
21:08
elementary school, you went to middle school, then you went to
21:10
high school, then you went to college, then you got a job when
21:13
you graduated college and you're doing the 95.
21:15
That's very typical. That's very, like, expected.
21:19
But you just like quit your job and not have another job lined
21:23
up on your on your own accord and kind of not really have that
21:28
kind of typical employment for like a whole year.
21:31
That's not so expected. So that's why 2023 was so weird
21:36
for me. I feel a little lazy, honestly.
21:42
But what I'm doing for money now, it's so it's so like you
21:50
couldn't tell me like two or three years ago that I'd be
21:53
working on side hustles that would be bringing me money and
21:56
that would be my primary source of income.
22:01
But that's what I'm doing now. So yeah, it's it.
22:05
It it's still, I don't know how to quite describe it, but I
22:09
guess for me it's just such a big deal because for like 30
22:14
something years of my life, it was textbook great even.
22:21
And then out of nowhere, like I I just quit my job.
22:25
And then for like an entire 12, well, 13 months now, it's like,
22:31
damn, it's like what what was, what was the previous 37 years
22:35
working towards this year where you're just like taking a break.
22:40
Yeah. So it's it's been weird and I'm,
22:46
I don't know why I'm lazy or just very content with not
22:48
having the nine to five. A lot of the things about the
22:50
9:00 to 5:00 I don't like. And the warning signs were there
22:56
even when I was still like working at Google.
22:59
This was been like five or six years ago.
23:03
No recruiters are listening to this.
23:05
But yeah, like I would always want to like leave the work day
23:09
early. Like I will always find is that
23:12
a normal thing? Like no one, no one was born to
23:16
want to work in a nine to five, right.
23:19
So I I think there's a difference between like you, you
23:24
love what you do. There's like some level of
23:27
passion for your day job, which I think is great.
23:29
That's awesome. But I like doing IT.
23:31
Stuff, you know, like I actually like doing it.
23:35
But the structure of like the 40 hours, 9:00 to 5:00, that's what
23:40
I don't like so much. And what I also really don't
23:43
like are the corporate and office politics.
23:47
I really don't like that. I've bitched about this before,
23:49
but my most recent job had this boss and they would do these.
23:58
He would do like a huddle. I forgot it was Monday morning.
24:00
But by the way, don't schedule Monday morning meetings with
24:03
your whole team. Just don't like like, no, don't
24:08
do that. Anyways, This bitch Monday
24:12
morning meeting every week and then he's trying to be like the
24:15
nice boss or whatever and he would always ask everyone oh
24:18
what they did on the weekend. My weekends are not like other
24:21
people's weekends. Other people are like I took my
24:23
kids to the park. It's like, oh, my parents
24:26
visited and my weekends are like nothing I can really say.
24:30
So I just, I ended up just seeing like I didn't do
24:32
anything. I was just chilling.
24:34
So I just had to lie. Not that it was anything that
24:39
was like, was bad to lie about. It wasn't.
24:44
I'm not like, you know, doing anything illegal.
24:46
But it's like, yeah, I was at this circuit party.
24:49
There was like 200 shirtless gay guys there.
24:51
Like, what? I'm Is that what I'm going to
24:53
bring into a meeting on a Monday morning?
24:55
But I just hated that so much. And I there are a lot of memes
24:58
about that. And it's like, for me, it's, I
25:02
just got so tired of the corporate 9:00 to 5:00 that I
25:06
would rather go and take the significant risk of starting my
25:12
own businesses, of being self-employed than to remain at
25:16
that job like even one week longer.
25:19
I was thinking for like months to quit that job.
25:23
Like every day I wake up and be like, I want to quit this job
25:26
for like for like 8 or 10 weeks. I was thinking like, I want to
25:29
quit this job. I don't quit this job.
25:30
I'm surprised I lasted that long.
25:32
So yeah, I think I do. I'm not against going back and
25:40
doing the IT and doing the 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever, but it
25:43
really would have to be. And it's not just because it's
25:47
like at 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, forty hours a day thing for me.
25:51
It really has to be like a manager that knows what they're
25:58
doing and is good at people management.
26:00
I'm surprised how many managers out there, but it doesn't matter
26:04
what your title is. You're a manager, a director, a
26:06
VP, or whatever, how some of the people are just not good at
26:09
managing people, even people that are performing well and
26:13
don't need any sort of special care.
26:15
God forbid for when you do bad managers, you have a bad
26:17
performer on your team and you need to manage up their
26:20
performance. OK, yeah.
26:22
But I just want to be somewhere where just have like a a good
26:27
decent people manager. Like a good people leader.
26:30
You don't have to be like the best, but just like a a a
26:32
decently good one. You know, someone that doesn't
26:35
like go behind my back and like meddle in my projects that
26:39
you've assigned me to do. Someone that checks in on you
26:43
every once in a while and be like, hey, I I know that you're
26:46
covering for like this other person for like a whole year.
26:49
Let's get you like an extra bonus.
26:50
So like, how can we compensate you?
26:52
Like, you know, like recognize when people do a little extra
26:56
work, you know, and like, reward that somehow, even if it's not
26:59
with money. Just be like, hey, I know you've
27:01
been covering for, you know, your boss for like most of the
27:05
year now. Like, I just want to say on
27:07
behalf of the team, like we really appreciate it doesn't
27:10
always have to be money. Just acknowledge them.
27:12
When someone is like going above and beyond to do something, as
27:17
you can tell, I'm drawing. I'm, I'm like, I'm shading these
27:20
bitches that I used to work for and I'm drawing actual examples
27:25
of things that I didn't like. It's not always about the money,
27:28
you know, The money is great. You know, a lot of people
27:30
wouldn't be working if they didn't need the money.
27:32
You know, hey, a paycheck is a paycheck.
27:34
The paycheck is important a lot. That's for a lot of us, that's
27:36
why we're working. But you know, a lot of people,
27:41
we're all just trying to get along.
27:42
So if you are a manager, a director or VP, you have people
27:46
that report to you in some sort of like office job, corporate
27:50
job or whatever. Just do, just make sure you're
27:54
like a good leader to these people, you're a good people
27:58
manager to these people. Like, you know, just really
28:02
understand what your team is bringing and delivering to the
28:06
company, to your organization. Say a thank you once in a while,
28:11
show that you actually care. You know, that's all I really
28:14
want from a manager, but that's harder than it sounds, if you
28:18
can believe it. So I am on the job hunt.
28:23
I've kind of been on the job hunt.
28:24
I feel like I'm so picky about the type of job that I want to
28:27
take on. There's actually this one job
28:30
that I saw that I think, oh, it could be a pretty good fit, but
28:32
you don't really know until you get into the interviews.
28:37
And the interview is a two way St.
28:39
They think I'm interviewing me. I'm interviewing them just as
28:41
much as they are interviewing me and I'm evaluating the hiring
28:46
manager. What's their demeanor like?
28:47
What kind of how are they answering my questions?
28:50
What questions are they asking? Are they prepared for the
28:53
interview? Were they late as a candidate?
28:56
I'm looking at all these things too, Just as you don't want to
28:59
be late for an interview. For a company that's trying to
29:01
interview you, it's like, we're the interviewer and you're late.
29:03
That doesn't look so great either.
29:05
So the last person that I talked to doesn't matter what company
29:11
it was, but the guy didn't even do like just a regular like hey,
29:16
good afternoon, my name is blah and I'm the Well, this is my
29:21
title here at XYZ Company. He didn't even do that.
29:24
He wasn't even looking at the camera.
29:27
He didn't even do a regular just like hi I'm John.
29:32
I'm with the I'm the recruiter for this position that you
29:35
applied for. He didn't even do that.
29:38
He was just looking down on the piece of paper and just like
29:41
ramming off questions. That's not the impression you
29:43
want to give to a candidate. It's like, is that how you
29:45
greet? Is that how you you would greet
29:47
a customer? Is that how you greet any random
29:49
person that you see at like a store?
29:50
No, it's like anyways, yeah, it's maybe I'm not ready to go
29:57
back to like the nine to five anyway.
30:00
So yeah, so I haven't been at the 9:00 to 5:00 for all of 2023
30:04
and I've really been putting a lot of effort into my side
30:07
hustles, really not my side hustles anymore, which are like
30:10
my full time businesses. They have, they have their own
30:14
checking accounts, their own savings accounts, their own
30:17
credit cards, their own everything.
30:20
You know, their own everything. I've kind of made them into like
30:23
proper businesses and I'm investing so much of my time
30:26
into it and it's great to like be self-employed.
30:29
The pros and cons I need to go get my own health insurance I
30:33
have. I don't have a four O1 Ki, don't
30:35
have a retirement match. I don't have gentle, I don't
30:38
have vision. I don't have all these extra
30:40
perks or whatever. I have to figure out my own you
30:43
know, self-employment taxes. I have to figure my own business
30:46
taxes, all that kind of stuff. But you know, assuming that you
30:51
can make it work and you can make a living out of it.
30:55
The pros of that is like I don't have AI.
30:57
I'm the boss bitch. You hear that?
31:00
I'm the boss. So I there's no one to tell you
31:03
what to do that's so great. It's one of the rewards of being
31:10
self-employed to have your own business, which is risky, right?
31:12
It's very low risk to just have a company give you a paycheck.
31:16
But I mean these days, I mean a company doesn't care for you
31:19
though like a company can fire you at any, any time that they
31:22
want really in most states anyways.
31:24
So we hear about these like layoffs, especially in tech for
31:27
like the last over 12 months now.
31:29
Google just did like a whole bunch of layoffs again this year
31:34
as we speak. But yeah, I've kind of sort of
31:38
soured a little bit. I I'm not going to say I'm never
31:40
going to go back to the 9:00 to 5:00, but it is so nice to.
31:45
I'm still adjusting a little bit.
31:46
Besides, this is where the when I say I feel lazy because I've
31:51
been so hard wired that if I'm not working 9:00 to 5:00 and
31:55
getting a paycheck that I'm not working right even though what
31:58
I'm doing it is bringing in money.
32:00
Obviously it's bringing a little bit more money, but that's why
32:01
I'm working so hard to like expand those businesses and grow
32:04
them and bring in more money. But it's so nice to like it's it
32:10
was it was so nice and natural for me to not have a boss and a
32:16
boss and like a leader, like a people manager and a boss and a
32:19
leader. They're all they're not the same
32:20
thing. They're all like 3 separate
32:22
things. To not have like a boss telling
32:26
me what to do and to like undermine me or to like any of
32:30
that stuff, it's so nice being my own boss.
32:33
Working for myself is like one of the best things.
32:36
So no, financially I'm not bringing in the most money.
32:41
I'm making like a 10th of what I used to make in 2023, something
32:45
like that. I would crunch all the numbers
32:46
but it's like something like a 10th.
32:50
But like if I had to do it again knowing I would be making so
32:55
much less money. And like, I've got a mortgage,
32:57
I've got bills to pay, OK. And I got this mortgage not
32:59
knowing that I would go create my job in a few years later.
33:02
But if you ask me again, if you can rebound the clock back to
33:05
December 2022, would you go do that again?
33:08
Would you go quit your job knowing that the economy is
33:10
gonna like, tank a little bit. All these tech companies can
33:13
have layoffs. You can have trouble finding a
33:15
job. I think I would, even though I'm
33:20
making so much less money and I still have this mortgage, I have
33:24
still have all these bills, I think.
33:26
I'm not sure I would change anything.
33:28
Maybe I would have been, maybe I would have been a little more
33:32
frugal with some of my expenses over the course of 2023.
33:37
But I think the, the personal growth and like the development
33:44
that I've had in terms of learning how to run my own
33:47
businesses, like not just a side hustle, but running my own
33:50
business, like being properly self-employed, running proper
33:53
businesses. I think that's a really valuable
33:57
skill to have. And having been able to invest
33:59
like my full time and energy into starting up those
34:06
businesses, I think in a way it's been invaluable.
34:10
And I've met kind of new people through those ventures.
34:14
And yeah, I think this is maybe this is what 2024 is going to
34:21
look like as well. I mean that's a good company
34:24
that will give me a nine to five for like an IT job.
34:28
You know what? I'll take it honestly.
34:31
But nothing's no job is permanent.
34:36
And if I like it, if I like the like that job enough to stay
34:40
there for a while, I'll stay there for as long as I like it.
34:43
If I don't like it, I'll quit. So that's not the type of
34:49
attitude I had with a nine to five job before.
34:53
And I found that it's a it's a healthier attitude to have about
34:59
it. Not thinking like oh like every
35:02
time that you get a job offer it's like an offering from the
35:05
gods and you need to be like bending over backwards to the
35:09
employees every whom and everything like that.
35:12
No, like I'm my own person. I'll work your job.
35:15
If I want to work your job and I'm not going to be a bitch
35:19
about it. I'll come to work on time.
35:22
I go to the meetings. I'll do what I need to do and if
35:26
it's something I like and I like doing the IT, I'll do a good
35:29
job. There's there's, yeah, that's
35:33
fine. But the moment that I that the
35:38
company's not treating me right, The moment that there's like way
35:43
too much politics or whatever going on, just knowing that, you
35:47
know what, I've made all the preparations and I have enough
35:51
diversified income to actually like quit my day job if I wanted
35:56
to. There's a lot of comfort in
35:59
that. You know, a lot of people, me
36:01
included, just had the one source of income, like just
36:04
their nine to five job. That's the only money they had
36:07
coming in. They have nothing else coming
36:09
in. And even I went and got a nine
36:11
to five job. Now that would be a slice of my
36:15
income, but I'm not going to give up the businesses that I've
36:18
started, but I just enjoy doing those so much.
36:21
And my ideal is that my own businesses make me enough money
36:28
that I can comfortably do just that and still be able to, like,
36:34
travel every once in a while, Not be like paycheck to
36:37
paycheck, be able to pay all my bills, but then also to like,
36:40
put money away, save money for like maybe a new house, or save
36:44
money for retirement and save money for like this and that,
36:47
right? So that's kind of sort of my
36:50
goal. But in the meantime, that's
36:52
gonna take some time. But in the meantime, if I'm
36:55
gonna on this journey, if there's a good company, decent
36:59
company that shows up with a decent job offer, yeah, I'll
37:02
take it. But then, you know, just knowing
37:04
that doesn't mean I'm going to be stuck in a 95 for the rest of
37:08
my life. It's just going to be another
37:12
source of income that I have on my plate.
37:15
That if I want to quit that job and decide that that's what's
37:21
best for me, then I can quit anytime I want.
37:24
Which is not the same attitude I had before.
37:25
I just felt like before when I was like 25 or 30.
37:28
It's like, Oh my God, someone's giving me a paycheck.
37:31
I can't ever shake a rock the boat.
37:33
I need to do everything they tell me and nothing else, which
37:36
is not the attitude that I have now.
37:39
I said I was gonna do a review on my 2023 and I don't know if I
37:43
did a good job of that. You all know by now if this is
37:45
not the first episode of my podcast you've listened to, I
37:50
ramble. But it's by design.
37:53
I talk about whatever I want on this podcast because it's my
37:56
podcast and not your podcast, so stay tuned next week.
38:01
I do want to bring David Lamb back for some future episodes of
38:07
the podcast, but yeah, that was my semi successful attempt at
38:15
recapping my 2023 and how it was very abnormal for me and maybe a
38:21
glimpse of my 2024. You know what like 35 minutes
38:25
into the recording I feel like I didn't really do the talk about
38:29
the topics I wanted to that I set out to.
38:34
But yeah, this is this is my podcast.
38:35
I want to talk whatever I want. If you got some suggestions, Not
38:40
to be totally hypocritical, but if you get some suggestions or
38:43
topics you will want me to talk about on this podcast, leave a
38:47
comment on the YouTube page, the YouTube comments for any of the
38:53
episodes because I do look at those.
38:55
That's the only comment section I have for any version of this
38:59
podcast. You guys seem to like it when I
39:01
talk about the gay cruises, especially my YouTube audience.
39:07
So yeah, if there's anything about the gay cruises you want
39:09
me to talk about or want some advice about, I'd be more than
39:11
happy to. Yeah, I'd be happy to talk your
39:15
ear off. Just comment down in the YouTube
39:17
section of any of the episodes. Honestly, they all pop up
39:20
whenever someone makes a comment.
39:21
And yeah, until next time. Bye.