Stopping mid-run to look back

It's been about a year since I started seriously looking for work.

Looking back on the year, I've never run this hard as a designer. A year ago I was just a marketing intern at DVC, building an app was something I couldn't even imagine, making money from design felt far off, and I had no idea I'd end up using AI this hard every day.

Honestly, I did go at it relentlessly. I'll have sent around a thousand applications soon, I chased real project opportunities harder than anyone, I went to every design event I could find on campus and off, I set fixed hours to build my portfolio (and I'm still revising it), and I signed up for mentoring over and over and fixed my resume dozens of times, and my portfolio too.

But even after a few hundred applications, finding a company isn't easy. Honestly, among friends in my major and my year, I think I have good projects and a good portfolio. Whenever I showed my portfolio site I felt confident. No internship experience, sure, but with the time I put in, knowing how to use AI well, the basics of website design, and a lot of practice, I thought I'd become good at this, back at the start of the year. But once I graduated and the OPT clock started, I did get a little impatient.

So: a few hundred applications over a few months, and if it isn't working, you have to change the input. I think it was Einstein who said that if you keep putting in the same input, you can only get the same output.

So in this AI era I started looking for work in a more human way. That's why I'm going to San Francisco before I have a job. The design meetups I'd been following since the start of the year, for one. And most of the companies I apply to are in SF. So even for an interview, going in person and seeing the recruiter's face has to raise my odds. Being remembered as Joon, who said hello in person, instead of as some name, has to be better.

So I went to SF twice recently. Being there slowly turned my bad first impression around, and after three meetups I saw how many genuinely fun, impressive designers are there.

But today it hit me for a second. Not that going to meetups is wrong at all. I believe it's right. The reason I'm writing this is that I stopped mid-run to look behind me. When I started I didn't know I'd have to run this far, this hard. I thought I'd be running after I got into a company. There's plenty left to learn, but I think I've come a long way as a designer compared to a year ago.

Then a Charlie Munger line came to mind.

"The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want."

I just have to be the best. Don't wait to become a designer, just be one.

I might be the best among the classmates around me. But outside school? At a design meetup? In this universe?

"I'll work out once I get a job and have time."

"I'll buy a computer for design work once I'm making money."

That's too late. If your dream right now is to be someone who works out, or a senior product designer, or a startup CEO, believe you already are that person and live like them. That's what I believe. I'm a designer who's going to work in SF. That's why I got my license, started looking into moving to SF, and paid six thousand dollars for a Mac Studio. Whether 2027 shows me to be a guy who was all talk, or proves my belief right, we'll see. This is what I believe. Thinking and believing are different. A seed of advice from a book, then more reading and advice from mentors, and the belief gets tested until it turns into conviction.

Looking back it feels like it was hard, but doing a little every day, steadily, I don't think I ever felt it was hard. And because I know it's what I have to do, it doesn't feel hard.