Alex Niedzialkowski March 30th 2021

What do you do?

For the last 10ish years, I’ve been performing, recording, and writing music under the name Cumulus. Music has always been a driving force in my life, and once I started writing songs, there was no going back to life before. Songwriting is how I process the world around me, how I share my life, and how I connect with others. I find comfort in the power of a song, to make me as the singer and writer, and then also the listener, feel less alone in this crazy world. (I just finished my 3rd record which will be released in 2022!)

In addition to music, I am a remote staffing recruiter for a boutique, woman owned recruitment firm based out of Seattle, where we help businesses find great employees. I connect people to awesome jobs. It’s been really fun to experience using all the skills I’ve developed as a connector of people in the arts, and now carrying that into a totally different industry. I spend my days seeking out and interviewing candidates and trying to make a great match between the job and the employee.

Advice/words of wisdom that affected your life you'd like to pass on?

Just because you don’t make a living at the thing you are most passionate about, doesn’t make you a failure, and it doesn’t mean you have to quit your passion. It took me a really long time to figure out how to do both, and it’s still a work in progress, but putting my foot down and really saying to myself “I can be more than one thing” was really important to my mental well being. Try to break down the parts of your passion work that fulfill you, and seek out how you can find those things in other careers too. For me, I knew that connecting people and building relationships was a huge part of my joy in music, so finding a job that utilizes that has been an awesome discovery.