Tomorrow is my birthday. 

![birthday-cake-illustration_53876-23079.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfQaNxdXLPVjzcMWC5ZaAJoWH452mhicWAfVwTrMnko9h/birthday-cake-illustration_53876-23079.jpg)

Usually, I have the bad habit of being depressed on my birthday. A combination of growing older and not yet being in a place in my life I feel comfortable in. There are always more challenges, some that are more immediate than others.

This year I think I managed to avoid the usual birthday depression but mostly because I'm more concerned with finding a job. I don't really have any concrete plans to celebrate. Might go to an escape room next week if the stars align just right.

I was let go in March and have been looking for a job for over two months. I'm getting a bit frustrated by how specific I need to be in answering job postings.

I'm looking for a full-stack position but I do not have a BCS (bachelor's degree in computer science) which most ads write as a basic requirement.

I have 7 years of experience as an ERP programmer but that doesn't count when looking for a full-stack position. I've only been learning and working with full-stack technologies over the past year so as far as applying to jobs is concerned I have barely a year's worth of experience.

I have a BEd (bachelor's degree in education) specializing in art education (photography). Unfortunately, that is not really relevant for most tech jobs.

I've worked as a graphic designer for 5 years (not counting freelance work). Again, not really relevant for most tech jobs.

It feels like I spend hours going over ads and sending bearly one or two emails out each day. I hardly ever get any callbacks (had only two since I started).

In an ideal world, I would like to find an interesting and creative full-time job that involves full-stack programming and image processing or education in some way. Possibly have a connection to TTRPG's if I'm really lucky. I would like to work in a place that would enable me to grow and sharpen my skills. More and more though, I find I would be satisfied with just a full-time well-paying job.

I started learning new skills last year since I felt like my previous set of skills was not good enough for finding a better job. Over the past year we've covered HTML5, CSS, JS, Node.js, React, MongoDB and SQL and I still get the feeling my skillset isn't good enough. Since I do not have that degree. Or worked with Linux, JAVA, C#, C++, ASP .NET, Python, Ruby, etc'.

Workplaces here seem to have more and more requirements from potential hires and it's so rare to find one I'm even officially qualified to apply to. The minimum experience threshold I see is 2+ years of experience.  It's the usual problem of getting experience before getting the job.

I know I should work on my Angular app or go over to Git and sharpen my problem-solving skills. It's just getting harder to motivate myself. After a few hours of going over job postings, I find it difficult to get motivated to do hardly anything else. 

Who knows, your company might be looking frantically for someone with a background in education, art, graphic design and ERP who also happens to be a JS coder. 

Well, that was me venting. 

Feel free to share any job searching stories or anecdotes you feel might be appropriate. If you have any concrete advice I would gladly accept that as well.