Yay I just had my first job interview in over a decade and it went well!

After being laid off from working over 10 years at a place I loved, completely due to pandemic finances and downsizing, and starting a very targeted job search in a few narrow fields of experience, I landed my first interview and I just finished and feel great! Even if I don't get the job or to a second round of interviews I felt really confident and better about the whole process, especially interviewing via Zoom. I read a post on Fairygodboss about prepping for a Zoom interview/meeting and took it to heart. I took the time to find a nice virtual background since my real background isn't great, I ran it by 2 people to make sure it looked okay, I figured it was best to swap my swivel highbacked office chair for a low non-moving one, "dressed up" with a smidge of makeup, but most of all spent a few days prepping by reading up on the website of the employer and coming up with a list of questions I wanted to ask and answers to the most usual kinds of questions I assumed I'd be asked. I did a trial run Zoom with my kid in another room just to ask how I looked with the virtual background and she wisely suggested I focus on looking up at the camera more because I kept looking down at how I looked. I really wanted to have my typed up notes in front of me with the questions I'd written to ask and answers to the questions I figured I'd be asked so I set up my screen for Zoom to appear at the top directly under the camera and minimized my notes in a spreadsheet right under that for easy reference. In the end I think it was a great setup and I rarely looked at my notes but had them there at a glance and like a security blanket. I was given 40 minutes of time and had time to ask lots of my questions (I forgot to ask one but that's okay) and it ended up feeling like a conversation with a colleague on the same wavelength more than an interview which I think is a good sign. I also discovered that instead of wearing the big Princess Leia buns-style headphones I figured I'd have to wear I could swap in my small earbuds instead which were hardly visible and made me look so much better with perfectly fine sound quality. I decided to share those thoughts here in case anyone else wants to chime in, toot their own horns, offer suggestions, blow off steam, whatever, about the world of interviewing!