This again?

Hello! 

This week was a frustrating one. No, the days weren’t out of order. No, nothing catastrophic happened. Something super inconvenient happened. 

To be fair, something inconvenient happens every week. The novelty of this week is that I lost to the frustration for about 3 days. This week’s letter is less about the specific frustration, and more about what to think about when you are losing the battle for your peace. 

Rewind with me really quick. The headline I talk about a lot with 2019 is launching my first successful Kickstarter campaign, or fulfilling orders, or whatever other story I tell starting The Hero’s Journal. 

But there was another story unfolding simultaneously. I didn’t leave the corporate world until 2020, so in 2019 there was a lot of toiling over what my career will look like for the coming year, decade, decades. 

The main frustration I was dealing with then: I could only find other sales jobs. My first job out of college was selling Yelp Advertising, so when I looked around at the job market, the only takers were other sales roles. 

Put simply, the new opportunities looked a lot like my current opportunity. 

I broke that cycle or so I thought. You see, when I was on my most recent job search, I was looking for a complete career pivot. I was trying to enter into a traditional corporate function: FP&A, Supply Chain, HR, etc. 

The opportunities that I had? eCommerce manager roles, doing pretty much everything I was doing running The Hero’s Journal. 

The frustration I felt in my early 20s, I was now feeling again in my late 20s.

People hire the experience that you have, not just your hopes and dreams. 

Back to this week, as I worked through the frustration this week, I found myself in stronger moments (of which there were few) asking myself what it is that was causing me to lose the battle. 

The actual issue was something that I have dealt with before, and was actually one of the things I am better at fixing. 

In the past couple days, as tensions as dropped, I have come to 2 conclusions about my issue: 

1. Not finding the gift in the frustration keeps you in the frustration rather than giving perspective. 

2. The frustrations you have today probably look a lot like the frustrations your future self will fight. 

The second conclusion is actually a result of my first conclusion. 

With a little space I have realized that the gift in this week's frustration is that I have another repetition overcoming this type of frustration. Making the inevitable next cage match with this frustration more of a fair fight… maybe I’m +100. 

In the same way you need supply chain experience to be a mid-level supply chain analyst. You need specific frustration experience to overcome the larger and larger frustrations that loom. 

The gift of more frustrations? More growth. 

Happy Friday, 

Kyle