I recently got a new job and, since that happened, I am moving back to the UK next weekend. So yeah, a lot of stuff has changed since the late summer blogs of being convinced all my failures will one day lead to something great and that whole spiel of "something better will happen". What can I say? I was right! To be hired by one of the biggest companies in the world is for sure a pretty huge success. What I expected, anticipated and convinced myself I deserve though goes beyond landing a good job. Throughout the last few years I had been waiting for the silver linings of a few pretty random things that happened. I will never, ever again call anything that happened in the past a bad thing because it is simply evident that every little detail contributed to this outcome in some way or another. So can I call today the silver lining yet?
I was recruited via LinkedIn, a platform I only took part in well over three years ago because someone at a career workshop told me that it was the "future of hiring". I hated LinkedIn, I didn't get it and still find it super boring to use. The only reason I ever go involved was that one day I didn't feel like writing more applications, but doing nothing instead felt like I wasn't trying to get employed. I convinced myself that making this profile was a career move and therefore counted as a proactive way of trying to find a job. The truth, however, is that I just wanted a break and never expected anything to come of it. For three years I went on LinkedIn three or four times a year to maintain my profile and see if I could make new contacts to appear connected in a business world I truthfully wasn't connected in at all. My most recent visit to LinkedIn had exactly that purpose, only that I had a message from Amazon...
Throughout recruiting I was asked about my blog as well. My blog started for even more random reasons. I like to write, I like stories, I like the news and for some reason sharing my opinion makes me feel good. Since this behavior has obviously no space in a profession, especially mine, and doesn't always make you a lot of friends either, I decided to start blogging four years ago. It was supposed to be a public diary; a place where I learn to articulate my sometimes controversial opinions because once they're out there I wouldn't be able to take them back. It taught me to think before I write, and I so often failed at accomplishing that. At some point even strangers started reading these thoughts, and I just made it a hobby I knew would never benefit me in any way other than giving myself a space to vent. That was until I was told I was being hired at Amazon for being a blogger...
The decision to make a LinkedIn profile and starting a blog were moment decision I spent less than 30 seconds thinking about on and yet, I wouldn't be moving to the UK next week if I hadn't done it. Now obviously I am delighted I have this promising job that makes me feel way more enthusiastic than all the others so far, but the impact of those little decisions are so much bigger than just landing me a new career opportunity. In one of my six interviews with Amazon they suddenly mentioned a Cambridge office and that there was a potential that I'd be sent there. Cambridge, or even England, wouldn't excite most people, but I like those ideas. In that moment, moving back to the UK seemed like such a bad idea., not only because of politics. I had, after all, just spent eight months trying to acclimatize to Germany again. Unfortunately, God made me a person so very much into bad ideas because I believe I can turn them into something good. So far, I'd say I succeeded...
To fully understand how I sincerely arrived at the conclusion that all my previous actions had caused me to move to England I have to back up so much further than I already have. At 14, I went to England for the first time to practice my English. As a teenager, I thought that one day I wanted to live in that little town an hour south of London I was staying at. I didn't get the direction right, but next week, 14 years later, I'll be based an hour north of London. Around the same day, I also made my first email address. Since I was about to move to California, I opted for something so cheesy it explains why Americans took a liking in me. I was moving from Aachen (AC) to California (CA), so my username became sina_ACtoCA. After California, I just interpreted the "CA" as Caledonia (Scotland) before I moved to Cairo and allowed the name to be valid again. Now, it looks like I get to keep it for another few years... 13 years later...
And finally, it's also important to look at the past year of a lot of close calls that would have put me on a different path. I was almost hired at Deutsche Welle, Politico, Business Insider, Huffington Post, CNN, International Business Times and many more, the most important word here being "almost". I failed! At the time, that didn't feel good. During these recurring failures I started to believe that I was actually the least likeable person ever because I was losing to crappy people. Like, I know I shouldn't be saying this, but some of them were just simply not better choices. So I just needed to tell myself that I was losing out for a bigger purpose. Let's take Deutsche Welle, for example, a job I wanted most out of all of them, and the people chose were great, but some of the ones they sent home were better. I could have easily been one of them. Everything I learned after I lost out was that a year from now there would be a good chance they would have not kept me on, and I'd be stranded again with no savings. Looks like that became a lot less likely now that I work for Amazon, at least the point of perpetual money problems. And I didn't even have to move to Munich, Karlsruhe, Bonn or some other crappy place that was once in the race...
So in the end, if this was the end, I can whole-heartedly say "Thank you, Jesus" to every single thing that happened that felt like failure. It definitely was failure, I didn't win all the time. But I did lose an inferior opportunity, and I am convinced I would not have felt as good about the first two weeks at a new job at any of these places as I have in the past two weeks at Amazon. Time will tell if this is in fact a silver lining, and I may meet a handsome, liberal intellectual in Cambridge I one day have a dog with or maybe the worst set of events ever, but right now I feel more excited and more hopeful about the future than during my last three years of chasing the impossible dream of being a journalist and also earning enough to eat at the same time. Moments of holding on to dreams, not just professional ones, did not stand the test of time, and as a result reality feels a lot better. I have a career and I return to where I envisioned being for years. Whatever it was that brought me to this path, that path strangely feels like leading home.
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