Attitude Adjustment

I have spent the last few weeks in desperate need of an attitude adjustment. Just in case you are scratching your head wondering what in the heck and "attitude adjustment" is let me explain- this is something my mom said daily when i was a teenager, basically it means you need to get over yourself. So back to the story. So for the last few weeks I have needed to get over myself, and by get over myself I mean, I needed to get up and move on with my life instead of wishing that things were going differently. I have been searching for a job... for a long time with limited success... and this was frustrating to say the least. I was irritated, I had been to school for so long, paid my dues, and thought I had a skill to offer the world. Turns out the current job market didnt agree with me, which is... understandable, but no less frustrating. This lovely little adventure has been going on since last fall, so by March I was done, sick of it, and more than a little discouraged. I think my perspective was more than a little warped because Brian got his job over a year before he graduated, in some parallel universe I thought it might be as easy.

As March wound on I was starting to dread april. April meant graduation and a trip back to utah. While I was excited to graduate it also made me feel sick. I was graduating with a Masters and no job, not just no job but no real viable prospects. I had chosen not to apply to additional schooling so that wasn’t even an option, for lack of a better phrase I was up a creek without a paddle. By this point I was looking for a reason to avoid graduation, to avoud my peers, and avoid explaining to friends why I didn’t have a job. To be realistic no one cares whether or not I got a job but I did. I thought going back without one made me a “loser”, just a “sucky loser”, somewhere along the way my internal vocabulary reverted back to the 6^th grade. By this point I really needed to get over myself and realize that life is good. I have a wonderful husband, a house, we have reliable transportation ( regardless of what Just Brakes says, but that is another post), Brian has a wonderful job, and well to be fair we live a pretty charmed life, but for some reason that wasn’t good enough in those moments. I thought that none of this measured up, why I am not sure, but this is like those moments when 16 year old girls look at their peers and instead of seeing smart beautiful women they see competition and they see themselves as the losers rather than the reality that they, like their peers, are smart, talented, and beautiful.

So by this point I was frustrated, and I decided to go and see my grandma. Well actually I needed her to show me how to sew darts into a dress but that is besides the point. While she was teaching me/doing it for me we chatted about this. Basically she said I needed to get over myself, which is true. She reminded me that while I didn’t have a job I did have so many other things going for me, and choosing to dwell on one of the few things that wasn’t going my way really was taking me away from enjoying what we do have. I left feeling better, still not thrill but more grateful, and less hard on myself. I drove home- all the way across dallas so it took a bit, and by the time I got there I had a plan, something I was going to do to turn my life back into what I wanted, a path, and even more a path to stop this horrible round of unproductive comparison. I was pumped by the time I got back out to lavon, and then I got a phone call. I got a job… I interviewed last week, left feeling unsure, but I got a job. I signed the contract and as of April 26^th my career is beginning. Now I have what I wanted, but I hope that I can keep things in perspective, there are some things that are more important than others, this while it seemed important, wasn’t really, worrying didn’t help, things worked out, and the comparison didn’t add anything to my life or the lives of those around me. So on that thrilling note I am back on track, I am excited to go to utah, and I am going to be TICKED if American decides to strike between now and then, cross your fingers nothing happens!