When life gives you lemons...

From Google Images

I am a fairly optimistic person, as most people who know me would tell you; however, this period of unemployment has really started to drain my ability to see sunshine and rainbows in my everyday life (just to clarify, I am still extremely pleased that we moved here and with the Seattle area in general). I think if I hadn't started off with two months of chosen unemployment (I was not going to commute 45 minutes to work everyday), I wouldn't mind so much. But going on 3 months of unemployment (only 1 month of active job seeking) and 4 months since graduation, I am feeling antsy and impatient to get back to work. I am ready to help people, dagnabbit!

My entire life I have loved working with children - helping them grow, explore, and learn about life. I spent four years learning about how individuals develop, how community systems should work, and numerous tactics on how to positively influence a person's life. I am eager to put my knowledge to use in a meaningful setting! Is that so much to ask from the job market?!

My sentiments about my future career run along these lines: "I hope to never live a lavish lifestyle. I never want money to be the motivation for the work I do. I never want money to be the worth of the work I do." I have known for quite a while now that working in the nonprofit sector means I probably will never make much money, but I have accepted and come to love this fact. Wanna pay me $12 an hour. Fine, no biggie. Just give me a worthwhile cause!

I am currently on a break before going back to get my masters degree, but have often found myself wishing I hadn't taken a break just to fulfill my selfish need to be useful. The choices in graduate degree specialties overwhelm me because I cannot decide the best avenue for my career.

Do I want to be a play therapist? Do I want to work with normally developing children or children with specials needs? Do I want to be a marriage and family therapist? Do I want to work intervention with broken families and individuals or work prevention with families and individuals at risk? Do I want to be a social worker? Where can I utilize my talents to their fullest capacity?

And do you know what I hate the most right now about being unsuccessful in my job hunt? Feeling like a waste. Not a waste of space or anything of that sort, but almost like I am wasting my prosocial tendencies. It is hard to put an exact name to this feeling.

I already know being patient is my best bet for working this all out (the job hunting and the feeling of uselessness). So I remind myself  everyday "time will tell", "que sera, sera", etc. But frankly, that doesn't ward off the blues quite as well as I would hope. Instead, what really restored my sense of faith in myself was a conversation with a good friend of mine, L. We are all familiar with the aphorism, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" right? Essentially this means to use the bad things in your life to make something good. Yes?

Over the years, this phrase has received a number of pessimistic and hilarious adaptations, with a few of my favorite being:

• "When life gives you lemons, throw them back and demand chocolate."
• "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade...But damn, there is only so much lemonade I can make!"
• "When life gives you lemons, just say 'fuck the lemons', and bail."
• "When life gives you lemons, throw them back at life and see if life will make that same mistake again!"
• "When life gives you lemons, ask yourself how exactly can an anthropomorphic personification of something immaterial like life give me a fruit?"

But my conversation with L about optimism and lemons went somewhere totally different and completely made my pissy mood worthwhile (as well as curing it). The conversation was something like this:

Me: I am starting to feel a teeny bit anxious that I won't ever find a job. 

L: Oh, you'll find one - smart girls like us always find something!

Me: Look at your optimism! That is totally what I need to get refill for - my optimism tank.

L: Well I don't know if you got the memo, but the motto is no longer making lemonade from lemons - it's putting your foot up life's ass and getting your way.

I am so thankful for great friends who remind me to always laugh at myself and at life. And as the Doctor says, "Rule 27: Never knowingly be serious" (Season 6, Ep 8). Life is too short, eh? So I am going to keep on keepin' on and I believe that I will eventually get it right. Love, love, love to you all!

From Google Images

Ready for a misadventure?

When I was originally scheming about writing a blog, I was intending to write about being a young married person and wanting to document the tumultuous period that is being a fledgling adult. I thought I would write about the slow food movement, social change, politics, eco-friendly living; however, now that the time to write is here, the only thing this foolish soon-to-be-Seattleite has to write about is misadventure. I promise to be cool eventually, but today is not that day.

I was not going to write about what happened with the moving company today, because I did not want to jinx our luck for tomorrow. Then I remembered adults are not supposed to be superstitious, so here goes.

The moving truck was supposed to arrive between 8am and 10am this morning. Around 9am, as I am editing a cover letter for a job I plan to apply for the power goes out. At first, I thought maybe it was a hiccup or a power surge. Checked the appliances in the rest of the room, yep, no power there either.

As I am walking outside and calling Matt to figure out how to flip the breakers (thinking that this was just a simple issue of blowing a fuse), I see the moving truck at the top of the ¼ mile long drive way up to the house. After a few seconds, I realized that the truck was not coming down the driveway even though I already checked that the gate was open and unlocked. My apprehension for this situation grows as I walk on down the driveway to see what the problem is.

If you have ever seen the rural property where we are living, you may remember that there is a power line directly over the driveway with two poles on either side. That is when I notice the tremendous sag in the power line above the driveway. And the inward tilt of the poles on either side. And the anxious look on the drivers face (we shall call him Joe).

After Joe informs me that he accidentally hit the power line while trying to come down the driveway, I call my father in law (with panic in my voice) and ask him to call the power company and let them know what happened. At this point, I wasn’t positive that Joe and I had knocked out power in the entire neighborhood but I had an inkling…the neighbors poking their heads out their windows was not a good sign.

Joe and I headed back to house to try to figure out what to do – we were still mostly concerned with how to get our belongings from the garage to the moving van. Walking the 40 boxes one by one up the ¼ mile driveway did not sound like an enjoyable task here in the Texas heat. It may have been early in the day, but it was already 90°.

That was when I heard it. The sirens, of course. Because what is a misadventure without the authorities getting involved? An ambulance and two fire trucks loudly careen around the bend in the road in our neighborhood. Joe and I set off at a trot back up the driveway, both muttering words of consolation and damnation.

The neighbors are coming out of their houses in earnest now to see what the fuss is about (who knew I was going to host a meet and greet in my pajamas?!). I am sputtering apologizes. Joe is an endless flow of reasons how this was all an accident.

It was all over with quickly. Joe and I realized we were not going to be risking our lives dragging boxes up the driveway under broken power lines so we rescheduled and he left. The emergency responders took their leave after taking our information. And before we knew it, the power company was out here with a truck and a cherry picker to right the poles, straighten the cables and turn the power back on.

Disaster struck and left me and the household company of animals (the chicken, 3 cats, 3 dogs, and 3 horses) all bamboozled and exhausted. Joe is coming back tomorrow, but we have arranged to meet him with all our stuff at the end of the driveway. Cross your fingers for us!