Hi. I see you’ve found my blog.

I’m sure the only people reading this are friends, family, and the occasional random person that stumbled across this post by accident while looking for something else, which means 99% of the people reading this already know who I am. However, I’ll tell you my life story anyways because isn’t that how blogging works? I’m new to this, so stop me if I’m doing this wrong.

Here goes: I’m Cody Carter-Squire, a 20-something college graduate born in Brandon Manitoba, currently living in Kamloops British Columbia, and trying to make a career for myself in radio broadcast.

Emphasis on the word “trying”.

I moved here from Thompson MB, where I’d spent seven months working in a few positions at their radio station. I started as their midday announcer and eventually worked my way into the newsroom and started writing and reporting. I enjoyed my time there, but ever since I was 13, I’ve wanted to live and work in BC. I’ve spent every summer since 2006 as a sea cadet on Vancouver Island, so BC sort of became my second home. That was my end goal; no matter how I got there, or how long it took, I would make it there.

So imagine my surprise, not even a full year into my first job in industry, when I found myself giving my notice at work so that I could go to BC and find employment out there. The opportunity had come up for me to move to BC (fairly inexpensively, I might add; or at least, less expensively than it could’ve been), spend two months working with cadets for the 5th straight year (11th overall), and then job hunt over the summer for whoever was willing to hire me.

One small problem with that plan: no one was willing to hire me.

I sent resumes and demo reels to anyone and everyone in the province that was looking to hire someone; and even if they weren’t, I sent them one too. I got emails back from a few places, but most of them said either “Hey we got your email, we’ll let you know if we want to hire you” or “Hey we’re not hiring right now, but thanks anyways”.

There were only stations in two cities that actually seemed willing to possibly hire me: Kamloops and Victoria. Stations in both cities said “Call us when you get here”, which didn’t really sit well with me; why would I move there just for you to tell me “We don’t have anything for you” to my face?

But there was another station in Kamloops that said “We have a casual position that we’ll have waiting for you in the fall”. And for me, that was basically a done deal; it was a foot in the door, a good starting point. I’ll find full time work somewhere else while I bide my time and wait for something permanent to open up. Sounds good to me.

The next step was finding a place to live. Now that it was decided that Kamloops was where I was going, I then needed to find a roof to put over my head. The friends and contacts I have there were super helpful in recommending different locations and people to talk to, and eventually I had a few good options to choose from.

When filling in rental applications, there’s a spot on there that asks about your employment. Which makes sense; they want to make sure you can actually pay your rent. So when I called the station to find out what to put on the application, I was given the bad news.

“We’ve given the position to someone else.”

Suddenly, anxiety began to take over; how am I going to pay rent if I don’t have a job? Where am I going to live if I can’t pay my rent? How can I get a job if I don’t even have a place to live? Did I make the right choice in leaving my old job?

What do I do?

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long for the answer to that question. The following week, I saw a posting for a full time position at another Kamloops station. It had only just gone up that day, so I quickly fired off a resume and demo, crossed my fingers, and figured I could still move to Kamloops and find a job to keep the income flowing until I got the job I wanted.

That was about a month ago. Fast forward to now: I didn’t get that full time job, but I am working with a different station part time as a board operator for broadcasting sporting events. Still got my foot in the door.

I’ve also applied for jobs with some other businesses in town, so I’m waiting to hear back from them about whether or not I have more work coming. Hopefully one of the dozen or so companies will get back to me, so that I know where my rent money is coming from.

And in case my mom is reading this, I’m still doing fine despite everything I just said.