Day 4: Interviews

Day 4

Here are the stats for the day:

• (new) Recruiter interactions: 1
• (remaining) Scheduled calls: 2
• Interviews planned: 3
• Interview steps completed: 2
• No new applications submitted
• Vibes: High

I’m most certainly grateful for all of the interactions I’ve had with recruiters that seem very valuable and promising. However, I’m not fooled into thinking things are “alright.” At the end of today, I was still unemployed and raking in exactly $0.00 annually, monthly, daily, and minutely. I’m still focused. I’m not slowing down.

First things first, I wrapped up a Bible study on James 2:1–4, which was a whole lot of fun. These verses reflect God’s impartiality and specifically warn believers against showing favoritism based on outward appearances. James is writing to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations. This is immediately applicable because, as I discuss roles and catch up with folks in my network, it would be unfitting for me to judge one person by superficial things and treat them better than another. To implement this in my own life, I make sure that folks know:

1. Regardless of whether you can help me, I still want to talk and catch up.
2. When interviewing, I truly want the company to find the best candidate. I pray to God before interviews that I be rejected if I’m not the candidate they need. This is so grounding.
3. When catching up with folks from my network, I ask if I can help them with anything. It flips the script and (I hope) shows the heart behind the conversation—genuine connection and relationship.

It was an excellent way to start the day.

Next, I did a 3.25-mile run in my neighborhood, which brought a lot of clarity and a LOT of sweat. I started running when I lost my job because I knew physical activity would bring all the things my body needed: nutrition (you just eat better when you know you have a run coming up—it sucks, I know), energy, confidence, outdoor time, struggle, and pain. These things are invaluable for a healthy mindset and for being ready to grasp an opportunity when it comes.

When I was all cleaned up, I researched job opportunities to find the next application I wanted to put in. I think I found one and began my soon-to-be-published AI process for tailoring my résumé and editing my cover letter. Here’s the gist of the process, though: I write the content first. I have AI edit it and suggest stylistic updates. I’ve gotten feedback that my résumé clearly communicates my abilities.

I finally started setting up my local models for personal use. I have a feeling that I can greatly reduce my spend and amplify my abilities when I do choose to spend on tokens. OpenClaw will be my harness. Immediately after I learned about it, I realized that this was the force multiplier for personal AI usage—and professional usage too, if it is ever an approved harness. OpenClaw has a Mac desktop app that I started configuring as a node since my OpenClaw Gateway is hosted on my Beelink box. That has proven to be a little tricky: I had to update my OpenClaw Gateway, reconfigure network access, and update firewall rules. Now I’ll have to troubleshoot the Matrix connection since it seems to have borked during the upgrade. This was orchestrated by me and written by Codex with 5.6 Sol (light reasoning). I used the Codex CLI running on my Beelink box from a terminal over SSH. I’m moving closer and closer to where I wanted to be: managing and configuring my Beelink without having to hook up a monitor.

The first model I downloaded (via Ollama) was Qwen3-Coder. For reference, my MacBook has 24 GB of memory…yeah, this model has 30B total parameters. It ate up 19 GB on its own. That, in addition to memory-sucking Chrome, left me basically paralyzed. I laughed real hard when I realized it, then waited several minutes for my cursor to move to my terminal and killed and removed the model. I’m now using Qwen2.5 with 14B total parameters. It runs nicely and takes 10 GB of memory.

Today was full of promising job prospects, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I pray these companies find the right engineer for their team and that I’m tossed away if that’s not me.

God bless!