A very tech-savy friend introduced me to TimeHop several years ago, and I was immediately enthralled. TimeHop acts as a time machine, sending you the updates you posted on the same day in years past.

Glued to whichever social media networks we’ve grown most fond of over the last decade, all of us — young and old — are consistently creating content, whether we realize it or not. Once our update is posted, commented on, and liked a few dozen times, several days pass and we move on to the next update, and then the next. Those posts seemingly cease to exist, especially in a world like Twitter, where some send hundreds of updates a day into the Twitosphere.

Being able to see what I posted a year ago, three years ago, even six years ago is fascinating. Now that I’m 25,  the years are no longer marked by semesters, summer breaks and finals weeks. Life has begun to fly by at a scary speed. I look at the calendar and am shocked that it’s already May, and I really swear that what happened in my life six months or a year ago had just occurred.

I love that TimeHop lets me appreciate the various mental and physical places I was in all those years prior. Some updates make me laugh, some make me cringe. Some make me shake my head and wonder what I was thinking. Others make me proud. It’s fun to look back and reflect, I feel like we live in a society and culture that’s always pushing forward to the next thing and the next, and we don’t take much time to look back.

So when my TimeHop app notified me today that it has officially been two years to the day that I put in my two weeks notice at TechTarget, I could barely believe it. In many ways, it feels like much more than just two years since I left Massachusetts. In other ways, I can’t fathom two whole years have come and gone.

I’ve done some amazing things over the past two years. I subleased an apartment and sold the majority of my physical belongings. I drove a massive UHaul to another state and rented my first storage unit. I said goodbye to a city that I called home for six years, and left dozens of daily friendships and replaced them with long distance ones.

I learned to speak another language. I traveled to six new countries, and spent weeks exploring each of them. I carried my life in a 55 liter backpack for three solid months, and successfully traveled solo for more time than I thought I could. I met people from all across the world of all ages, and connected with them on social media to expand my social circles to several new continents.

I moved back in with my parents, which is something I’m relatively sure I swore I would never do again. I fell in love (another thing I’d sworn off at that point in my life). I took my very first community college class… after I’d already received my Bachelors degree. And after months and months of wavering and indecision, I committed to staying in California, where I hadn’t lived in the better part of a decade. I reconnected with Los Angeles friends, and salvaged long time friends that we’re feeling destructive and unproductive. I reunited with east coast friends, in familiar cities and new states. I built new friendships, with women I feel so lucky to know.

And now, two years later, I’m finally feeling ready and willing to go back to a steady 9 to 5. I’m even ready to take on cubicle life again. Well, sort of.

Do I love being cooped up inside for eight hours a day? No, of course not. But do I miss content production, the creative process, writing about new subjects and constantly learning about new things? Absolutely. I miss having my hands in a content management system, I miss implementing SEO best practices. I miss interacting with my readers on social media, and pitching my blog posts.

And so it’s time. Two years later, to be back in the workforce. Of course just because I make that decision, doesn’t mean all is said and done. I’ve been and felt ready since the start of 2014, and have been job searching and applying since then. I thought I’d be through the process by now, but unfortunately, it’s rather grueling.

I’ve lost patience and motivation more than I’d like to admit, but what helped recently was writing a post for the Intent.com blog, which helps readers spell out their intents for the coming days, weeks and months. Whether a fitness and wellness, social or career goal, Intent is a place where you can type out what you plan to be doing so you can hold yourself accountable. I wrote a post on Keeping the Faith during a Job Search, which was a great way to both rant about the frustrations of writing endless job applications and remind myself that I will find an amazing job and the pieces will all fall into place eventually, and that losing patience is okay, but that it will still all work out.