Unemployed

2015 started with a big move from Oaxaca’s small village, back to the big city I had left years ago. We have been quite busy looking for our new home, reconnecting with friends, family, and navigating the French administration to get health coverage, visas, etc.

Moving back to Paris also gave me a chance to finally leave a company where I had no intention to stay anymore. As much as I enjoyed my time at af83, after a few years I got the impression that I would receive little from the company no matter my efforts. Maybe this was not the case, but this is how it felt at the time, and the last time I checked.

And so in 2011 I mostly stopped caring about this job.

After losing interest in the company, I quickly grew bored of my daily life, and decided to leave for Mexico. After all, Oaxaca is a pretty awesome place, and I knew I could do my job just as well, away from a company that did not offer me much in Paris. And I did, working from home, or sipping delicious Mexican coffee in a café, it worked swell: I forgot about stress, commutes or metro cards, and focused on getting things done¹.

Back to 2015, when we decided to move back to France, it was never with the intention of slipping back into my old skin. Rather, I planned to look for what would be next.

Trying new things

Then, two friends offered me different paths: either take an engineering job at well-funded startup, or jump down the rabbit hole to start a business.

As things go, I wanted to try to fit in at a new company. I knew I could provide some value elsewhere. So I quit my old lifeless engineer position, for a new more exciting engineer position. And all was well, for a little while.

Daily commutes to the office, daily stand-up meetings, a weekly code freeze before the push to production: the well oiled mechanics of our technical jobs were at work again. I felt little to no pressure. Success was (is?) attainable, it would come after a few months of work: just make sure that the platform can handle new features, more traffic, and generate more profits.

I was part of a cool machine, and yet still thought of my own little project. I kept working on it on my free time, and soon it was clear that I had made the wrong choice. So I quit, again. This time, I felt really uncomfortable leaving a great team, but I needed to.

This all leads to this moment where I am officially unemployed, but sweating to create a sustainable business because it is fun, and different from what I have done so far. I am learning new tricks, bringing new ideas to life, and getting paid for it I hope I can get paid for it. In sha’Allah.

Let’s see what the rest of the year will bring.