This is the Kos newsletter: warm email notes from a friend. Finding the simple joy in parenthood, bodies, spirituality, creativity, and beauty. Sound like your jam? Subscribe below for weekly notes.
Hello!
How is summer treating you?
I’ve gone on 6,000 trips and eaten ice cream almost every night. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy re: 4 kids at home and other times I feel blissed out. We’re working on house projects (will share about that soon!) and taking loads and loads of flattened cardboard boxes to the recycling center.
Feeling Hunt-y
I’ve also been looking for a job. Did I mention I got laid off?
I’m looking for a senior content role based in the Bay Area. I want to go into an office, but I have a little flexibility. A hybrid role would be perfect. I want to work for a fantastic mid-to-large fast-growing company whose mission I can get behind. Learn from great people, get some mentorship, stretch myself, perhaps manage.
It’s been a good but weird couple of months since the layoff. Definitely a growth season. Please cross your fingers and toes for me? Hoping to land something great within the next couple of months. Many thanks to Linkedin friends and friend friends and ex-Meta acquaintances, and random strangers who have reached out to offer an intro or referral. It definitely helps to feel less alone in the process.
Feeling Grateful
Every day I feel grateful for the overly confident risks I took in my 20s. The ballsy DMs, the request for intros, and responding to job postings I had no business applying to. I was unconventional but I thought it was normal because all Keenan and I’s close friends had unconventional freelance and start-up careers. But I think it was just Brooklyn hipster entrepreneur vibe circa 2009. :) Either way, grateful for it.
Grateful for the friends of friends who took chances on me and hired a young freelance copywriter to “write for their dating app” (ahem, Match.com) or kind book editors at Penguin who offered freelance book jacket copy work, or a call from Joe Gebbia to work on a “quick project”. I didn’t deserve it and I just feel lucky. (And I’m glad I figured it out and didn’t embarrass myself too much.)
Feeling Behind-y
In some ways, I feel so behind in my career. Like, so behind. In other ways, the trade-offs feel fair. Right even. Some pull back here, meant front lines of diapered boy babies there. Some push there (like 5-7:30am freelance) meant mid-morning mom meet-ups and building a village to help me raise my family far away from family. Another baby x 4 meant creating the big family I always hoped for and pushing the pallet cart at Costco (yesss the dreammmm), but also the difficult pull balancing between seasons of homemaking and nurturing and free labor vs. investing in my career, intellectual challenge, and earning capabilities.
Feeling Soapbox-y
The best advice I ever heard for moms who work is this: Always keep one foot in.
Always keep one foot in.
It can be posting updates on Instagram. It can be working part-time, keeping in touch with past co-workers on Linkedin, reading industry news, or taking a free online course. Writing a blog, starting a newsletter, or creating a podcast. (Hey-o.) Some freelance or consulting. Maybe mentorship.
It can be doing something completely unrelated to your “career” but still something that stretches you and fills you up. But the idea is still the same: keep one foot in. Don’t forget that side of yourself. The one that can take care of yourself, show up in a meeting, present on the fly, speak confidently. Just keep that spark and sparkle that has a little something to prove, that wants to persuade, that wants to counter. That wants to wonder aloud if it could be possible and if so, how (she) could be the one to make it happen.
One foot in—a little momentum, a little courage so that when the pendulum swings your stride’s ready and strong.
If you liked this newsletter, there’s one thing you can do that will help me more than anything: share it. You can share this post now by clicking below. I see and appreciate every like, comment, share, and good vibe. xo Koseli