Two years at my first job in the country we now call home

Two years ago I walked into Major for the first time. Today makes it official: two years there, and it's still the only job I've had in the UK.

Before I get into the anniversary part, I want to go back to the beginning, because I don't think I've actually told this story properly anywhere.

We moved from the Philippines to London a little over two years ago, after my husband got the opportunity to work here. I took a career break so I could focus on helping us get through the move, the paperwork, the settling in, all of it. And then it was time to look for work again, and I was terrified.

Not the normal kind of job-search nerves. The kind where you quietly wonder if the years you spent building a career somewhere else even count here. I kept thinking I might never get hired in this country. That the market wouldn't want me, or wouldn't understand my experience, or would take one look at where I'd come from and move on to the next CV.

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I applied anyway. For about a month, nothing. Just the usual silence that comes with job hunting, application after application going nowhere, refreshing my email for no reason. I poured everything into every single one of those applications, because it felt like the only thing I actually had control over.

Then one came back with a yes.

After that, everything moved fast. Initial interview, then somehow I'd passed it. Technical interview next, the one I prepared for obsessively, going over things again and again until I was sick of hearing my own explanations out loud. I passed that too. Then the final stage, the cultural interview.

That day almost fell apart before it even started. My husband and I got on the wrong bus on the way there, and by the time we realized it, we were nowhere near where we needed to be. Then the signal decided to give up on us completely, no maps, barely any bars, just the two of us standing there trying to figure out where we were. We ended up booking an Uber, even though we were trying hard to stay within budget and avoid spending outside of it. I tried to send an email saying I'd be late, and even that almost didn't go through, the message just sitting there refusing to send while the signal came and went.

I showed up thirty minutes late. And they had waited for me. That alone told me something about the kind of people I was about to work with, before I'd even sat down for the interview. I passed that one too.

I remember sitting with it afterward, not quite believing it had actually happened. Somewhere in the space between the anxious version of me who almost talked herself out of applying at all, and the one holding an offer letter, something had shifted.

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On my first day, I saw something painted on the wall of the office that stopped me for a second: you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Easy to walk past on a normal day, but that day it hit differently. It felt like the building itself was telling me: hey, you made it. Not made it as in finished, made it as in you're here now, this is real, this is the start of something.

It's funny how two years just went by like that. From that first day, nervous and unsure if I'd even make it through the week, to now, sitting here writing this as I celebrate two years in. Two years later, I'm still here. Still learning, still occasionally googling things I probably should already know, still grateful in a way that hasn't worn off yet. Grateful for this job, yes, but more than that, grateful for the people I've met along the way in this new chapter. The colleagues who made a foreign country feel a little less foreign. The small everyday kindnesses that add up to something that starts to feel like belonging.

 

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If there's one thing I keep coming back to, from that first day to now, it's this: you don't have to be great to start. You just have to start, and the being great part comes later, if it comes at all, and honestly it matters less than you'd think.

I was anxious the whole way through, scared of not getting hired at all, but I knew myself well enough to know I'd apply anyway. That I'd do whatever it took to keep going, even while the fear was still there. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have any of this, the job, the two years, the people.

So if you're standing where I was standing two years ago, wondering if you should even bother trying, this is me telling you: you should. You don't need to feel ready. You just need to start.