“How did the interview go, Alan?” 

No different to an actor feeling good walking out of an audition, I couldn’t help but notice the pep in my step as well. There’s a reason they call it a gut instinct, and my gut was telling me that for a freelancer who hasn’t officially interviewed for a traditional job for just shy of a decade, let alone the short notice…I had every right to be chuffed with myself. 

I wasn’t wrong, they really liked me too …and my old colleague was hoping I felt the same so he could report back and play official matchmaker. It was a double win for me. I performed well, which in turn also made him look good as the representative who vouched for me. 

Cut a long story short, I didn’t get the job. There were a variety of factors I don’t feel at liberty to discuss here. However, I was both relieved and gutted at the exact same time — a very unfamiliar feeling. As for the former…well, I didn’t really want the job anyway, I was just happy to accept the opportunity for a professional learning experience and see what’s what, then simply go back to business as usual. 

As for the latter…it would have been a career/life changing opportunity had they offered it to me and I said yes.

And this is the moment where my attitude changed…

Earlier I mentioned how there was more to come.

Well, it was at this moment where I had a choice: Go back to yet another period of grind and hustle and find another network of freelance clients that, admittedly, I’m quite good at ....or take my own advice as per linked in my intro. What was driving me closer to the latter, was how much I enjoyed that interviewing experience, for the first time in under a decade, with one damn cool company I believed in…and could envision myself working for. 

It got me thinking…

Guys, I’m exhausted. And I’m also currently broke. 

I just don’t know if I have it in me right now, yet again, to go hustling for a new client base — I need a breather, I need stability, I need something that “leads to something.” 

My experience at that interview was so positive and inspiring, I caught the bug to want to feel it again. But this time, I head to interview like a candidate looking to secure Lord Alan Sugar’s quarter-million pound investment on The Apprentice.

I’ve been working with a career coach these past 2 months to help me reposition and sell myself — via my CV, self-promotion, and interviewing techniques. I’m pumped, I’m all guns blazin’, I’m ready to take my insanely strong skill-set I’ve built solely as a freelancer and freelancer alone to an organisation who values it.

This process I decided to accept and go through simply because I had nothing to lose as they say, has in fact won me something — this new attitude — this beast within me that has been awoken.