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 All frothy on top. I don’t think I could get by very long in a world where I wasn’t allowed to have my morning cup of coffee. I like mine strong but milky. Is that a contradiction? Whatever it is, it’s just so yummy, so comforting. Since I’ve been working from home, it’s become something of a routine that eases me, with caffeine love, into my day. My close companion through email checks, day-planner updates, feed-reading, and finally, settling into the workday. Coffee and I are BFFs for life. …and instead, put my life on a successful and fulfilling career path. That is Resolution #2 for 2010.  I’ve mentioned many a time how hateful I find my current job. Over the past year I must have applied for 50 jobs. But despite my education and work experience, nobody is hiring in this economy, not even entry level positions with salaries that would leave me barely able to pay the rent. It’s depressing. I should know, because I let this apparent failure on my part depress me for a good chuck of last year. I felt like I had no options available to me, like I wasn’t even hireable for the crappiest crappy job that was really no better than the crappy dead-end job I currently have. Worst was that few of the jobs I was being rejected for were even things that I really wanted to do. So I started thinking real hard and doing some soul searching. After a while the answer became so clear that I wondered how I couldn’t have known what I wanted to do with my career the whole time. I’m going to be a Professional Organizer and Interior Decorator. I’ve always been madly obsessed with organizing and making things more useful and functional. I’ve also always had an eye for aesthetics and seem to know when things go together and when they don’t. Looking at catalogues or magazines, I put together possibilities in my mind’s eye. In every room I enter, I look at what works and what doesn’t and how it could be made better. It’s what comes naturally, and what I should be doing as a career. So that’s my second resolution for 2010: to stop being afraid, to take the plunge into doing what I love and to work at it every day until I have successfully established myself in the field. It’s gonna take a lot of hard work, maybe some night school, and a lot of believing in myself even when I have nothing to show for it. But if I’m ever gonna have a career it has to be started now. I just gotta remember to take baby steps until I get there.  My mind moves much faster than my life does and I’ve been noticing lately how much of an issue this is for me. How incapable I seem to be at just thinking about right now instead of 20 minutes, 20 hours, 20 days or 20 years from now. I focus too much on what’s to come, on what’s next, instead of what I have to embrace and enjoy right now. The more I think of it, the more I realize what kind of debilitating long-term problem this has been. I am a collector of possibilities that I never seem to get around to fulfilling. And waiting for later takes all the joy and excitement out of something that was once shiny and new. It becomes old news before it has even begun. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with how much I hated (and how trapped I felt by) being in school. Living in the moment was always the last place I wanted to be. I don’t think I was always like this though. As a child I lived in the moment, I’m sure. But once my horrible school experiences started taking over, I think that’s when my collector behaviour began. This problem has been niggling the back of my mind for a while and it’s not something that I’m just going to get over tomorrow. But I think that if I keep it as a goal in my mind, to not just live in the moment but to appreciate it and find joy in it as well, then things will slowly start to change. It is the Year of Change, after all. I need to allow myself to have some time to just be, because for too long I’ve been putting off for tomorrow what I could’ve and should’ve been doing today. Reminds you of the name of this blog, doesn’t it. Coincidence? I think not. Well, I’ve definitely decided that telecommuting is worth giving another try. Though it is gonna take some getting used to, finding a new routine. I’ve been telecommuting for a few days now, but inevitably I’ve been spending the whole day in my PJs and feeling out of whack because of it. Today I’m trying something different. Attempting to ignore the pressure to begin work immediately upon waking up and instead starting when I’m good and ready. (Read “showered.”) I think part of the reason why the transition has been so hard and why it didn’t work before was because I’ve been trying to keep my hours up. But for me, working from home can’t be about putting in 40-hour weeks all the time any more, or I might as well be working in the office. Changing one’s mindset is hard. And it’s harder than it sounds, acting as though you already are the person you want to be. Maybe I’m half way to pretending. Somewhere near that mid-lifechange point. There’s still a lot of prep work to be done and routines to be hammered out and some definite cleaning of my apparently neglected apartment to wade through, but perhaps once those things are in place it will be easier to wake up believing that I already am who I want to be. I just need to give myself more time. Time to settle in, time to clean up and time to focus on making plans for actually starting my career. Time to enjoy Christmas would be a nice bonus, too. And keeping crazy hours at my current job is not gonna help me with that. So really, what this is is time to let go. I don’t have to be the best at that job anymore because now, I’m learning to be the best at something else. |
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