I’m looking for a new job right now. Everyone does this, right? I’ve done it about 20 times in 10 years, which may sound like a lot, but I started my career as an actor, so I was always job hunting. Talker, Tailor, Banker, Sigh would be the title of the movie of my resume right now (the jobs have been eclectic to say the least), the Sigh relating to the job I’ve had for the last 3 years as a toucan handler.
Let’s say this: I have a great job. I get paid well. My boss adores me. My coworkers respect me. I have history with this company, having worked part time for them for almost 7 years previously, and someone always brings in treats for the break room. I should be dancing on the ceiling. But I don’t like it. And I don’t like not liking it. I want something more.
I want a job where I have to problem solve. Where I get to think every day. A job where people need me and look to me for direction. A job where I can talk about the things I love, like golden ratios and trig functions and Shakespeare and linen trades and what it means when you smash them all together... Is that the plot to Two Gentlemen of Verona? You tell me! I want to debate and discuss and FARM. I want to farm. Which is why I went back to school to do just that, five years ago.
My farming work study started just 3 weeks after my fiancee left me for another woman. I was not in the best place. I was crying all the time (never cried ONCE in the fields. Stupidly proud of that ) and when all was said and done, my old boss asked if I would work for him? Just until I found a farming gig. It was perfect. A job where I could be numb and start to rebuild seemed too good to be true. So I went back to the routine of toucan maintenance.
Here’s the thing about being a toucan handler... you don’t have an original thought in your head. You spend your whole life logistically filing other people’s thoughts. Which was what I needed at that point. But as time has passed, I feel more and more like the computer on the Starship Enterprise. I repeat what is said, but I say nothing. I realized this year, I needed to leave. I needed to get back to who I was.
So with all of this, I jumped into the void. I sent resumes far and wide, and heard back from no one. It’s hardly surprising. I’ve been working with birds, what company would want me as a farmer? Disappointment in the eternal silence that comes after an application is sent is something I had grown accustomed to. What I had not anticipated came last week...
A call. A real, live human being at a farm left me a voicemail asking me for a phone interview. I was beyond excited. I called my parents. No joke. That’s how unabashedly excited I was. I CALLED MY PARENTS. I called the man back, got the voicemail and left a message. It was then that the silence descended.
One day passed, two days. A weekend. That Monday I called and left another message... upbeat, curious... “I’d love the opportunity to speak with you about this position!” Nothing. Four more days have passed and I’m stuck, staring at my silent phone, realizing that, not only am I never getting an interview for this job, but I will never be a Jedi. Jedis can make phones ring. SUPER Double disappointment.
Needless to day, I woke up this morning ready to pronounce the day dead before it even began. I thought about calling out. Taking the day off to wallow. But, like so many mornings before it, I dragged myself into real clothing and got myself to work.
I was swimming in disappointment when a coworker sat down in front of my desk and said, “I think I am two seconds away from a nervous breakdown.”
I looked at her, thinking, “That’s my line! I’m the one struggling today! MY life is awful, not yours!”
But I just nodded my head and asked, “What’s going on?”
Before I knew it, I was talking her off a ledge. At lunch, I sat down with her laptop, being choked by the new Windows 10 update, and helped her get in touch with a tech gal who could fix it. She came up to see me before she left for the day. “I can’t thank you enough. Have a good night.”
And now I think I need to thank her. Because I do wallow in disappointment. I let it suck me down into a spiral of doubt and self loathing, and strangely enough, one of the few things that pulls me out, is someone else saying, “I’m stuck down here too, how do we get out?”
So job interview be damned. Expectations be damned. Yes, I need to find something that challenges me to help others, but maybe that’s not a job. Maybe that’s volunteer work for me during the weekends. I’ll figure it out, but until then, I just need to remember I’m not the only one living with disappointment. On that road, I travel with great company.
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