A brief history of me.

 Jobs Wanted, Any Jobs at All

This piece made me think about how I felt when I graduated from college and how I still feel about myself and my "career." 

I don't remember receiving any career advice along the way.  I had next to no idea about what I was going to do to support myself.  I stayed on over the summer after my graduation working nights in the Public Safety office and sleeping the days away in a basement dorm room that had no air conditioning.  I had very little human contact, but I planned a roadtrip.  I tried, studiously, to avoid thinking about a future beyond that.  I surfed the internet, I pored over maps and I pretended that everything would just fall into place when it was supposed to.

Then the summer ended and I had to go home.  I hated home.  So, I drank too much.  I still hated home.  I worked for a few weeks as the secretary of my parents' church and I was hung over every day. 

I went on my roadtrip.  I drove from the east coast to the west coast and back with my best friend.

At times it was liberating... and frustrating... and joyful... and depressing.  But,  mostly it was painfully beautiful.  And I wanted so badly to never come home, to never have to make a decision about what to do with my career or anything else, and to stay out there in the great wide open.  We camped under the stars and in the snow, wandered around National Parks and big cities, visited oceans and lakes and rivers, hiked in deserts, mountains and forests.

And sometime during the trip, I think that it was in New Mexico, I decided that I wanted to be a park ranger. 



Then we got home, and suddenly that seemed like the most far-fetched and unrealistic idea I'd ever had.  I made excuses.  It paid nothing.  I would most likely end up at a park I hated  I'd have to work for years before I got to go anywhere cool.  I had no skills that would qualify me for that job.  The government hiring process was unbelievably daunting. 

I was terrified, as always, of failing at anything I determined to be a worthwhile pursuit.  It was better to not try at all than fail and be humiliated in that failure. 

So, when we got back, I instead decided to do something easy, something I knew I could do, something with absolutely no risk.   I worked as a courier as I had every summer during college.  Instead of interning somewhere helpful or taking extra classes.  Instead of trying something that might be difficult that would leave me lying flat on my face with everyone saying that I had obviously reached beyond my ability. 

I spent about a year driving around all day delivering packages and envelopes everywhere from southern Virginia to New York City.  I liked the job, but at some point, the ability to stay on my parents' health insurance ended and I quite suddenly realized that I had to get a job with benefits.

So I started looking for a job that would pay me a decent salary, give me a 401(k) and provide health insurance, so I could move out of my parents' house.  I found a jobs in teh newspaper and sent them my resume.  Soon I had an interview for a job that sounded like it might be pretty cool.  And they offered me the position.  All of a sudden it felt like it would require me to take on way too much responsibility.  I was terrified at the prospect of failing.  So, I didn't take it and began to look for jobs with lower expectations.

I didn't find what I was looking for because I had no direction.  I had no idea what it was I was looking for.  All I knew was that I needed to get out of my parents' house and possibly out of Baltimore.

I wanted desperately for someone to tell me what to do.  I had no idea where to go from there.

I was miserable. 


So, I took a safe job with no responsibilities and no possibilities and still did rather poorly at it.  I thought about going back to school.  I thought about teaching and ecology and museum studies.  I couldn't imagine having any more debt.  Or going to school while working too.

I moved in with my boyfriend hoping that a relationship would fill the emptiness that I felt.  It didn't.

I took another safe job, which paid slightly more and provided me with several lifelong friends, but I was bored all of the time.  There was no work for me to do.  I got lazy.  And thus I did poorly at that too.   

And all the while I was still miserable.  I had these vague ideas about what I was supposed to be doing with my life.  I wanted more than anything to get married and have kids.  My partner kept saying that he didn't know if he wanted kids, but he loved me and I ignored that it was never going to work out.

I quit my job and worked in a yarn shop.  I found that I was good at that.  I liked going to work.  I liked the people I worked with.  I liked working with people and helping them out.  I liked organizing the inventory and stocking the shelves.  But I made only enough money to pay for my health insurance and to service my debts.
 
Then, I was given an opportunity and I started working as a paralegal and apprentice IT manager.  I made more money than I had before but this time I hated my job.  And I wasn't very good at the paralegal part of it.

I thought about going back to school again.  I thought about teaching and astronomy and paralegal studies.  I decided against it again.  It was too much pressure to make a decision. 

My relationship began to show visible cracks and finally my partner left me.  I was destroyed.  So, I drank.  I had been waiting for him to make decisions about my future that he did not even consult me on.  All I wanted was for him to come back, for him to make it better.  I felt like I had wasted six years of my life with a man who never intended to marry me.

I was thirty.

I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  I looked around me and saw people who were employed doing things that they liked, who had healthy relationships that worked well and had direction and ambition for their lives.  I felt wholly inadequate.  

I thought about going back to school, yet again.  I thought about teaching and art history and environmental studies.  I decided against it, yet again. 

While I like the job I have now, I feel very strongly that I am not living up to *something* that I should be.  I cannot seem to engage in a healthy relationship and I still can't seem to decide what I should be doing with my life in order to support myself.