The Freedom Capstone

Today I just found out that ArenaNet was extending me an offer for their first design intern position. This comes as fantastic news, and really serves to highlight what Freedom has done for me. This whole past week, starting from last Friday afternoon, has been completely crazy and very tense; that is when I first sent in my application and received a design test back from them. And throughout this entire week, it was Freedom that guided me through many of the challenges that I would face during my application process.

I won't get into specifics, but most of my drive came from two sources; inspiration and motivation. Freedom provided both of these, but in a rather unusual way. For the inspiration, whenever I was faced with a difficult problem, rather than trying to solve it in as direct a way as possible(as I would have been likely to do before Freedom), I took a step back and looked for alternate solutions that would give me the most flexibility in how I wanted to proceed, but would also give ArenaNet everything that they wanted from me. This approach made me a lot more comfortable with my decisions, which I believe contributed a lot towards my successful application.

The other source, motivation, was already present. As a matter of fact, Freedom is why I decided to apply to ArenaNet in the first place. I knew that my preferred work style would fit in well at ArenaNet, possibly more so than any other company I know of. As a result, I was far more motivated not just to get a job, but to get THIS job. That is something that constantly pushed me to go above and beyond what I originally thought I was capable of doing, working a solid 20 hours(!!!) over the weekend to make sure that my design test was the best it could be. 

I'm not sure what the future holds, or even how long I will keep Freedom as my alignment. What I do know is that Freedom has helped me improve myself in many ways, from professional to personal, and I am truly glad for having had this experience.

No Regrets

It occurred to me recently that I have never regretted a decision I have made with Freedom. As often happens in life, you sometime need to make choices without knowing much about how things will turn out as a result. This can be scary, and often leads to a lot of second-guessing and what-ifs... things which humans are naturally drawn towards doing, but unfortunately don't advance us in any way, as we can't change the past.

The funny thing is though, with Freedom I have not done any of this. Even weeks and months after many of the decisions I have made, I find my mind wandering into that old antipattern of what-if... before realizing that yes, I DID make the correct decision, and that there was absolutely nothing else I could have done to make the situation better. Every time I asked myself 'what does Freedom want to do?' before making a choice, I was usually very satisfied with the result, but at the very least was always content.

This has, in many ways, allowed me to redirect a lot of that focus on the past into the future. The time I would have spent worrying about past decisions is now focused on what I can do in the future to secure more happiness. While my actual thought process hasn't changed much, my overall life satisfaction has definitely improved... and I only have Freedom to thank for that.