Just One Year?

It has been way too long since I’ve written a post for my own blog. In case you’re wondering where I’ve been, or what I’ve been up to, check out the website of Sustain DuPage. I’ve recently started volunteering more with various projects of theirs, lending my writing skills to the cause of sustainability closer to home. It’s incredibly fulfilling, but doesn’t always leave time for my own blog. I am still working on balancing all the aspects of my life. I wonder if that’s something anyone ever truly masters? I digress.

 

This week marked my one year anniversary of being at my current job. I don’t know how it flew by so fast, but at the same time, it feels like an eternity. It feels like I’ve always been there. Maybe it is because I am meant to be there. It’s the right place, the right job, and the right time, with the right people.

As I reflect back on the year, I think of how having a steady, full time job doing something I love has given my so much confidence. Part of that is acclimating to the role, but part of that is taking on challenges and obstacles at work that I had no idea I would be able to tackle. I have been given tasks in the past year that a year ago, I would have not had any idea how to handle- but handle them I have.

I’m a huge proponent of faking it until you make it, with the caviat that you definitely need to know your own limits and when to ask for help. I’m blessed enough in my coworkers to have people who are more than willing to help me. This is because their desire for our insitituion to succeed is far more powerful than their desire to beat out a coworker for a better paycheck. That kind of self-serving has no place in my workplace, and for now, that’s how I like it.

The only way to handle challenges, I have found, is to just do them. To attack them face on, and to stay present in the doing. Yes, there is doubt. But dwelling in doubt is something that we cannot afford if we want to pass through obstacles and into successes. If only success were anywhere near permanent. Like obstacles, like doubt, we must move through success, and to our next obstacle, which leads us to even greater success. This is how we grow.

I am so grateful for the opportunities I have had to grow in knowledge, in confidence, and in expertise. I am grateful every day to wake up with the feeling that I am making a difference, both at my place of employment and in my hobbies and volunteerism.

To those who said I couldn’t find a job like this, who said that changing the world is a pipe dream destined for people who want to be unemployed and miserable- I thank you for the inspiration, and I am proud to say that has not been the case for me. (To make it crystal clear, this is not said out of spite, rather it is said out of honesty and with no grudge whatsoever.) To those who believed in me, and continue to believe in me as I travel on my life’s path to uncover my vision and my dreams: thank you for believing in me. I believe in you, too.