emsessentials: Life Update - As of April 2019

Hi everyone, happy April! This post is a bit different than the usual ones that I write and I think it might be the first actual life update that I am posting. Time has been going by so quickly and there have been a lot of changes in my life which I thought I'd share. A couple of the upcoming posts I have relate to things I am going to mention in this post so I decided that updating you beforehand would be beneficial.

First I need to back track a bit to provide some context. I moved back home after graduating from college in May of 2018 and I really can't believe that was almost a year ago. I feel like time keeps passing faster and faster. I want to write a blog post about post grad life from my perspective soon. I don't know why I didn't read any before graduating but I guess I was just focusing on the present and not completely thinking about how different my life would be after college.

During college I spent a semester abroad in London during the fall of my junior year, that spring I was back in the U.S. at my regular college; taking classes, participating in extra curriculars, etc. and I was also applying for internships for the summer. I ended up completing 2 internships the summer of 2017 and I continued interning/working at both places after the summer ended. Fast forwarding a bit now- I continued working at one of the companies after I graduated college but it was not a "regular full time job". I did not take time off between school and working so everything kind of felt continuous to me. I continued working there until the end of January 2019 when I was laid off. It was definitely not something that I was expecting to happen but the timing actually worked out since I was ready to do something new and I wanted an actual full time job ( I was working 32 hours before instead of 40). It was not a super easy thing to go through though of course, but I did not miss the job itself, only the people that I worked with.

So from the beginning of February 2019 through the end of March 2019 I was unemployed. Again, not how I envisioned my life after college to be. When I was younger I knew there would be time between college and getting a full time job but I thought that would be right after I graduated, not a year after. I hadn't mentioned this on social media before or to that many people in general because I found it (it = being unemployed) to be really embarrassing but it's not something to feel ashamed of. It is just the situation I was in, not a reflection of my worth as a person. I will have a whole post about that soon because I think there is a lot to discuss.

As I was not working I was on unemployment and focusing on getting a job. Every state has different requirements for what you have to do while unemployed in order to claim unemployment and I made sure to follow those guidelines. Getting a new job is almost a job itself since it is time consuming and requires a great deal of effort between finding jobs to apply to, actually applying, writing cover letters, researching companies and preparing for interviews, going on interviews, following up, etc. That has been taking up a decent amount of my time for the past 2 months along with doing lots of organizing, cleaning, cooking and other things around the house and doing more errands for my parents. Also it was my first actual break, since as I mentioned I hadn't taken time off since school had ended and I never really had much time to process post grad life or anything and I finally had a chance to reflect and think.

Because job searching has been taking up the majority of my efforts I feel as though I have a pretty good understanding of the process and have tips that I will share in upcoming posts. I will link them here once they are published and i hope you find them helpful! It is that time of year when soon to be grads are going through the job process and I wish all of you luck!

I also wanted to share 2 other things that I have done recently while being unemployed and they are going to the Boston Flower and Garden Show and going to the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston! It was nice to have the chance to do these things and having something to look forward to during a time of uncertainty for me. (Pictures are below)

This brings us to the present and I am happy to say that I was recently offered a job which I accepted and I will be starting it next week! I am excited about this new chapter!

Boston Flower and Garden Show