Doing too much too soon

Against my better instincts, after I resigned from my previous role, I took on way too much way too soon and started interviewing almost immediately. I had a couple weeks to put together an entire talk for KotlinConf, and also knew I had a week of international travel ahead of me, but I still decided to pile on.

And hoo boy was that a mistake, and it showed on the early interviews. Yes, I did a fair bit of prep and did the best that I could, but in hindsight I'm not sure I was truly ready to be interviewing and I can't say that I gave my best, A+ performances. Maybe more like C+ or B-. I felt reasonably OK with how they went, but not necessarily great.

The weird thing is that I should have known better, but for some reason I felt an odd twinge of pressure that I hadn't felt before in my career when I had gaps. Younger me would have taken a decent amount of time to recover, and then when I actually felt ready, would start the job hunt, confident that I would land something good. But for whatever reason (kids, bad job market, getting older, general state of the world?) I felt like I had to get off to a fast start on the job hunt and predictably I haven't done very well.

All that to say, I still have no idea why I felt additional pressure this time around but for me it further reiterates that I do best when I have time and calm. So gonna take a few weeks to take a step back, chill, assess, and channel my younger carefree self to attack the job hunt with confidence.