Only if You're Feeling Patient with Me...

I fail at updating this thing, sometimes. Forgive me. I should try harder to live up to my last post's title, or the title of my whole blog for that matter. 

In the interim I have been evaluating different aspects of my life and trying to make peace with them. 

I'm trying to make peace with the color of the leaves as they change from summer-green to autumn-orange, a sign that time is rushing ever forward, towards some things I don't feel prepared for. 

I am trying to make peace with my copious, long-awaited, and suddenly empty-feeling free time. 

I am trying to make peace with the past, because sometimes I forget that life is not a chapter book that I can flip back and forth through, skipping the parts I don't like and rereading and rereading the favorites. 

I am trying to make peace with this place in my life, this time, which is not the point when I am supposed to be wandering and daydreaming as I was a year ago. Somehow, the lack of obligations and structure is now making me crazy.

Let me save you the pain of reading what I have written here many times in the last six months, and let me say that as tough as it is, I am trying to live with purpose and with open arms. 

Today, I don't feel that way. Tomorrow, when I am walking home from work smelling like fried food and feeling like my feet might fall off, I will probably feel just as frustrated. But now is not an interim, just like a favorite author has pointed out to me. Now is a real time, and every time and season we grow through is a preparation for things to come.

Sub-standard Employee Still Writes

This is not how I wanted to start my day. This is not a blog I want to write. This is a day that is happening anyway, and this is a blog I have to write, for honesty’s sake and for my peace of mind because I am first and foremost a writer. 

I was fired from my part time job this morning. 

Trust me, I feel even worse when I look at it in print. Every thought you’re thinking right now as you read this, I’ve already thought with about 150 times the guilt and self pity that you can’t feel. 

So why am I writing this? Because the reality that most people avoid is this: even good people get fired from their jobs. I sincerely believe that I worked hard as a hostess at that restaurant, as hard as I could, and my boss did not like me or appreciate that hard work. It’s not an ideal situation, and it’s one I never thought I would be in; no one ever does, but it’s real and true and hard and scary. They said that my work was sub-standard and ill fitted to their establishment, in so many words. 

My question, after 6 months worth of weekdays and weekends dedicated to this position where I worked to the best of my abilities, is: 

To what extent can I take responsibility for this failure without losing faith or confidence in my ability to be a productive, hard-working employee just like everyone else? 

I was kind, considerate, polite, consistently on time (which is no easy feat for me, I’ll admit), and I always tried to do what they told me no matter what. The restaurant industry seems like easy money for wait-staff. The reality is, it can be really complicated. It is impossible to please both the customer and the boss at the same time when the boss says, “Seat them here” and the customer says, “May I sit there instead?” A customer’s wants and needs come before those of the establishment (within reason), and so the seating plan can become disarrayed, and the boss gets upset. 

It’s over now. I am starting from scratch in a down economy with a black mark on my resume and a Bachelor’s Degree I’m not sure I can use. I am writing this because my story is the reality of many unfortunate circumstances trying to get back on their feet. 

As my mom says, I can only look forward. I can choose to take what I can learn from the experience and lay it to rest. I don’t know what that means for my future, but I’ll keep you posted.

Blackbirds and Blogs.

My husband is jamming with his acoustic on our bed, and I just read eight chapters of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera. (To my shame, it's harder for me to read and grasp than it was when I read it in high school.)

Matt and I went to see the new flick Julie & Julia tonight. I'm glad I did. I'll let you see for yourself what I mean when I say that it inspires you to reevaluate your own potential. Driving home from the flick, Matt mused about how hard it is to choose a career and make a living, especially when you have more than one gift or talent.

"Sometimes I wish God have given me just one talent so that I wouldn't have to worry about whether I am choosing the right one."

I responded, "I wish that so many other people weren't so good at what I am gifted with, so that I don't have to feel so intimidated."

I have a feeling that God was not sympathetic to those statements. In fact, I'm sure that He was disappointed. I am too. I think, now that I'm sitting on my bed listening to my husband play "Blackbird" with perfect ease, and I sit here writing away, that it's not the people, the industry, the world we're afraid of. We're afraid of ourselves.

It's like Julie said, "I can write a blog. I have thoughts." Indeed.

All the Single Ladies

There is nothing like an important life transition to show you who your friends are. Maybe I have never reached an important life transition. Maybe I was never so attached to my friendships as I am now at this point in my life.

This weekend was my bachelorette party. Amidst the stress of sorting RSVPs and scrounging for money and making plans to move out and in for the third time in a year, I took a weekend to spend with my girls. My best friends, my surrogate sisters, my soulmates. There were a few abscences. (Damn economy.) Most were there though, as promised, armed with mixers and clad in cocktail dresses just for me. There are pictures that will never be posted online or shown to our grandkids. There are stories that will be told forever. It was a fabulous weekend, one for my books.

As we sat around my living room sharing our "First/Worst" kissing stories, I contemplated each girl. My breath caught in my throat for a fraction of a second as I realized that each chapter of my life, each major transition that I survived was represented in the room. A surreal sense of wholeness settled with me. They were each with me through many of my firsts and worsts, and they are still cheering me on in my biggest adventure yet.

They are each incredible women. Smart. Sassy. Hilarious. Kind. Loving. Beautiful. Women. 

These are my friends, I kept thinking in awe and inexpressible gratitude. I hope and pray that each of them fulfill their dreams, and learn to see themselves as I see them- wholely beautiful, dearly loved.

A few days ago I was crying to my mom about how I hated not being in school and not having a job and not having money and never seeing my friends. I cried because this transition from college to career-seeking has been rough and lonely, and I was afraid that being absent from school would mean an absence of friendship. But last night, as I raised my glass to make a toast to my girls, the song "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" came on, almost as a challenge to the words I was about to say. It made me think twice.

To me, the bachelorette festivities weren't so much a celebration of my next transition so much as it was a celebration of the ones I already had, and the ones who got me through them. I celebrated with high hopes that I might be doing this for them one day. I celebrated with the hope and deep desire to someday drive hundreds of miles and stay out way too late and tell crazy old stories just so that I can say to them, "I support your dreams. I support your future. I support the woman you are becoming."

There is nothing like an important life transition to show you what kind of friend you aspire to be.

Future Employers, Fellow Employees: Please Read.

Last Tuesday night I was taking the Metra from Ogilvie station back to Elmhurst. The cars were full, and conversations carried from one seat to the next, whether anyone intended to overhear them or not. Behind me, a woman sat sideways in her seat, knees curled up beneath her, sketching on a notepad and talking to her friend on the phone. Even as I listened to my fiance talk about wedding plans, I couldn't help eavesdropping on the woman's conversation. Apparently, my fellow passenger has just hired a new assistant at her design company, and it's not going well.

"This girl seemed so bright. She just got a Master's in PR and plenty of internship experience. She had great recommendations. And I'm just so... disappointed. She's... lazy. Now that I have an assistant, I'm not only doing my work, but hers as well."

The woman went on to explain several scenarios in which the new girl had fallen far short of her expectations. The girl has even responded to her requests, saying, "Well, I don't do [insert task here]."

The conversation was intriguing to me for a number of reasons. For the first time, I was able to hear exactly how bosses perceive an employee's behavior, everything from their verbal response to their body language, to the way the dress and the amount of time it takes to accomplish a task. I know that it's important to dress professionally, work efficiently, and show office ettiquette. What I was hearing in her conversation was an unedited, heart-to-heart between two seasoned professionals. This new girl will probably never hear any version of that conversation. Maybe she'll hear a version of the "It's just not working out"-talk. But she might never know the specifics that I heard in that phone conversation.

When you are an assistant to a boss, they rely heavily on your ability to speak, spell, react quickly, and make suggestions or offer constructive criticism. I was slightly shocked to hear that there are employers that care and even rely on their employees' opinions of the material produced in their company. I should know this, but somehow I feel that we've been trained to believe that if we tell our bosses what we think they want to hear, they'll respect us more. In truth, we've simply been trained to cover our asses, a mindset which molds employees like Disappointment Dimwit into the lackluster assistant that she is.

As I kept listening, I had an irrational and overwhelming urge to turn around, stick out my hand, and say, 

"Hello, my name is Bethany, your long-lost wonderassistant." 

But I didn't. Probably would not have been a very good first impression.