Wednesday through today have been … different. I got a job offer early Wednesday. So I have been inventorying and signing papers rather than job searching. Also, my perspective has changed. Before I oscillated between feelings of hopelessness (“I’ll never get a job”) to feelings of doubting optimism (“God has a plan for me eventually“) to unfounded/vague optimism (“It’ll all work out”). Now, there is an end to my joblessness and I feel different.
Now that I have some certainly about the future, I feel better than when I felt like I wasn’t moving forward on anything. I felt like I was stuck in a very small town of five thousand for almost indefinitely. I have lived here since I was four. After going to college in Seattle, which I absolutely loved, I had to return to this town in June 2009. Now, 7 months later, I’m leaving.
Even though I didn’t enjoy living here that much, I am going to miss it. You cannot live someplace very long before forming connections with the community and church. That is true for me and I am the shiest that I know. Any severance hurts even when most of my high school friends have left Burns. ”Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
The future is not completely certain though. This job has many stages. The first is 5 weeks of classroom training, which I have non-employee status and a stipend. There is a chance that I won’t advance to the actual job and have to pay back the stipend. I almost didn’t sign the papers quickly enough when I was waiting for them to answer how large that chance is. Then I got an email that there was one slot left so I signed right away. I am definitely do well in training so that that is not a possibility.
Also, the position is in Pierre, South Dakota. This is quite an adventure estimating relocation costs and the trip itself will be quite an adventure. All of this is new to me, so there is quite the learning curve. I can manage though.
As a Christian, I am supposed to focus on the invisible and eternal, rather than the temporary. I don’t think anyone can do this “focusing” all that well. I have felt hopelessness in other situations including my group software project. I don’t think I cannot stop focusing on the temporary; I am human after all. If I focus on circumstances, then I am prone to oscillations in hopelessness. The platitudes did get me through it though (“keep pushing on. I’m sure God has a plain for you”). This depended on the person saying the platitude though. With some people the same words sounds almost mocking.
The last couple weeks, my church has Sunday school on leaning on the promises of God. The last week, the message centered around Psalms 27:13 “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” Have I despaired? No, but I believe that I was depressed several times during my job search. (Not as much as Freshman year of college but that is a different story.) I do know that my happiness and carefreeness now will evaporate into hopelessness once again sometime if I am still reliant on circumstances. I have slept the last couple nights without waking up in the middle of the night like I usually do, which is probably a coincidence.
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