Unemployment Chronicles Chapter 4: Thank You

For a second there, I felt like a teenager using social media.

That second was the moment I checked a simple posting on Facebook that I was debating even putting out to the world in the first place. A short, simple statement with not much depth, but with a lot of potential impact in my life.

Brian Bolek

Interview time. Let's do it

This simple status was posted a moment before I got out of my car Wednesday afternoon, dressed in my powder blue dress shirt that I wore while standing up as best man in my friend's wedding a few years ago, accompanied by a tie from a wedding I attended Memorial Day weekend. The marriage of these pieces of clothing built my confidence to an appropriate level entering the interview.

Instead of spoiling how the interview went, what the job was for, what were some questions I was asked  (and so forth), I would rather focus on the feeling that I felt, hours after the interview was done, once I checked to see the encouragement I received from a simple social media posting.

We all know the deal with these postings - we all have our lives and like to share them with people. Some like to get a rise out of people; others like to share pictures and news with people who they may be lucky to see once a year, with a bunch of different circumstances in between. I've shared my share of Unemployment Chronicles in the past couple months, none which featured details of an interview or great job lead. And now that I have both, I feel like I'm Mileying you with my flesh-covered resume, teasing you with what may have happened (or not have happened).

It's not the actual job or the interview that matters to me at this point - it's the reaction I felt when I saw the plethora of "likes" and the words of encouragement from many of you, wishing me luck and wanting me to get out of this unemployment state. Yes - these messages we post are often self-serving, and yes - we unreasonably need reassurance from time to time that we have a great network of people behind us. And that's what I felt at that time. I want to thank all of you for your encouragement.

The biggest thanks go to the closest around me - Jen, my parents, brother, sister, sister-in-law, nephew, grandma, my closest friends, etc. It's for all of you that I wish to succeed and make the most of these 7-9 decades of life that we're lucky to have on this earth, wherever I decide to work.