Picture from unsplash.com; Contributor: Redd Angelo
It’s a challenge trying to succinctly define my newfound joy, but I’ve always relished linguistic challenges. And what better thing to write about than the thing that overflows from you, the thing you have to share?
When I think about my new job, as a part-time Library Aide in the Tech Services Department of a local public library, it makes me smile. Joy floods up from my belly, washes over my soul. My skin tingles, as if joy was an electric current moving over its surface.
At first, I imagined telling people–my parents, my co-workers, my supervisor–“You have no idea what it’s like for someone to finally say, ‘Yes,'” but that didn’t seem right. Perhaps they had known rejection as intimately as I had, if not more so. Given the chance, they might tell more compelling stories. No, it wasn’t just the immense relief from rejection that I wanted to convey. It was our mutual agreement in that “Yes.” I have not been forced to settle. Nor have I found myself so quickly pressed beyond my initial limits, (or just as quickly relegated to the sidelines) that I felt dismissed. Instead, I’ve been given the chance to do things I’m good at, in a place I love to be, and in a way that works for me. Experience has shown me that this combination is incredibly rare. Now, I’ll work to prove that, while rare, it’s not impossible.
Three more aspects differentiate this job from so many others I’ve tried. First, I’m not afraid that this job is going to end. It does not bear with it the time constraints of seasons or contracts, or internships. Which means that three months, six months, a year from now, I won’t be questioning if there’s a place for me, and I won’t be back where I started. I don’t feel as though I’m climbing an endless, pointless hill. What’s more, the fear that I will be fired for some inadequacy or imperfection doesn’t appear to have followed me into this new job. Yes, it tried to come to me that first day, a mist, a whisper, a cold-fingered tap on the shoulder. This time, I decided I wouldn’t let it knock me down, I wouldn’t crab-crawl, crying, back against a concrete wall, I wouldn’t run. If I was to be fired, which has never happened before, then until then, I’d give it my all.
This morning, I was listening to Gwen Cooper’s Homer’s Odyssey and I heard a passage that seemed especially pertinent to my transition and what I’ve been writing here. Laying out a lesson on relationships that her blind cat, Homer, had helped to teach her, Cooper writes in chapter twenty-one of her book, “…when you see something so fundamentally worthwhile in somebody else, you don’t look for all the reasons that might keep it out of your life. You commit to being strong enough to build your life around it no matter what. In doing so, you begin to become the thing you admire”
During this last week, I’ve felt myself beginning to develop that kind of strength, the strength to build my life around work I love. Lots of people want to know how my job is going. Monday night, I got an idea similar to that of the daily gratitude journal I kept throughout 2016. I chose one word and used it to describe not only my experience and how I felt but also to psyche myself up for the next day. (I’m still learning to believe though. As I shared my ideas, my inner critic tried to psyche me out. Silencing her takes tremendous effort.)
Still I wrote:
Today, remember that you are:
Tenacious
Resilient
Invaluable
Unwavering
Motivated
Persistent
Honest
Amenable
Noticed
Trustworthy.Remember precision over speed. Line up those book labels, and keep a light hand on the ink stamps. Psyche yourself up for tomorrow. They want you back for another part-time shift. Take this daily victory in the fight for life. And maybe make it into a series of blogs….
That’s the second aspect: a positive word I can hold on to. I don’t think I’ll stick to the same pattern for a whole year this time, but I have decided to find different ways of incorporating my work experiences into my blog as a way of helping and encouraging others. I’ve only been at the job three days, (My inner critic tells me I’m still in the “honeymoon period,” but I’m not listening to her. Instead, I’ll focus on my daily word list and the other positive reasons I’ve found for keeping at my job.)
Tuesday’s word was AWESOME. Really. I didn’t just capitalize that to ink-shout. I wrote:
Today, remember that you are:
Accomplished
Willing
Extraordinary
Selected
Overcoming
Mending
Eager.Tomorrow will be a different kind of Wednesday, one you haven’t seen in quite a while. It’s a Working Wednesday. “It will work.”
Nerves will squeeze you now, like a boa constrictor, because you are tired; because the bus will come; because it will only be day three….
Pray. Breathe. Sleep. Take another day and be thankful.
Let’s do this thing…tomorrow. Sweet dreams.
I struggled with this list of seven words, particularly “O” and “M.” Yet, “Mending” seemed especially appropriate. Denial, rejection, “No,” even silence, can really tear at you and leave you feeling like the proverbial filthy rag. Here, this job, the many blessings I’ve received of late, seems like an opportunity for mending. And I just have this sense that there’s something in the bigger picture that I’ve yet to see. For now, though, I feel as though I’m:
Uplifted
Steady
Educated
Fulfilled
Unfinished
Learning.
I know I didn’t get to where I am on my own. So many have prayed for me, loved me, encouraged me, put in a good word for me. In that, I’ve found another reason to keep at my job. (This is the third differentiating aspect; my list of reasons to stick with it continues to increase. Read, “Real Life, People” to discover the first four.) I want to make those who know me and who are getting to know me proud. I want my former volunteering supervisor to see that her belief in me is well-founded. I want my current supervisor to see that his decision to hire me was, and will continue to be, a worthwhile choice, and I want my co-workers to know me as a woman who can be relied upon to do steady, solid, quality work. Most of all, recognizing that much of my joy stems from gratitude, I want to please God, who has seen fit to give me something my heart has long desired (a job where I am surrounded by and get to work with good people and good books. ) As in the biblical story of the master and his bags of gold (Matthew 25:14-30), I wish to return this to Him ten fold.
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