I have been working for RS for three years. And for that three years, my job has consumed the majority of my life. I have been working 50+ hour work weeks at a mandatory six days per week. I have missed birthdays, holidays, parties, events, births of friends' children, and everything in between. I have put up hundreds of thousands of price tags, written hundreds of schedules, done more planograms than I can count, hired, fired, laughed, cried, and worked myself into oblivion. I have developed relationships that will see me long into the future, and created problems in my relationships at home. RS has been my life for the past three years.
But no more.
Day before yesterday, I was fired. Yep. Fired. Me. Can you believe it? And yet, it was the best thing that could have happened to me at the best possible time. I got fired for a reason that was not within my control but I will happily accept the outcome. It all fell into place at the best possible moment, which makes me completely convinced that it was what was supposed to happen. Here's why:
1) My wonderful, beautiful grandparents in Texas heard about all that I was accomplishing and my fantastic 4.0 from last semester and, as a treat, sent me a little extra money in the bank. Wonderful people those grandparents of mine :).
2) I just purchased my gorgeous Cruze, and have enough money in the bank to cover the payments for a little while until I find my newest adventure in the work world.
3) Midterms for school are over the next couple of weeks which just so happened to be the time @ RS when we were scheduled to have two manager meetings in Greenwood Village, a Verizon training, four store resets from 9pm - 1am AT LEAST, on top of pricing changes, store hour changes, and all of this stuff going on at school.
4) I have an amazing significant other who supports me and wants me to be happy in a job that pays me well. So, probably for most of the remainder of this semester ( a couple of months ) I am going to be house cleaner, pet player wither, volunteer work doing, school ass busting, Turbo Fire Bombshell looking out for my family, friends, and myself... of which all have been neglected deeply over the past three years.
So, plan of action from here? Turbo Fire my butt off and ROCK our Bombshell challenge, get together a stellar resume (which my leadership professor has already gladly agreed to help me with), do some volunteer work for some local shelters as I have wanted to do for SO long, and kick butt at school while blitzing every vet office in the Denver Metro Area looking for any possible shoe in so I can have a job that takes care of me and that will truly value all my hard work and determination. I'm going to enjoy some of the Halloween festivities I otherwise would have missed (or been unable to fully enjoy due to work scheduling or homework), spend time with my family, and pull off another 4.0 semester.
All of it sounds great on paper... and I do believe it is the best thing for me. But I must admit.... only a couple of days in and I'm already itching for things to do. Sure, i have plenty to catch up on in my life that I have missed, and money isn't everything, but a lot of who I am is tied up in my work. I have a very huge drive when it comes to tasks and accomplishments... and being fired (backslash separated from my family of three years) was a huge hit to my confidence. Even if it wasn't something I could have done anything about, I still feel like a failure. Which I suppose rolls us right in to the next topic:
Hiding in plain sight.
Let me explain.
So much has happened to me in my life time, as does all of us. We experience failure, rejection, sadness, and more than our fair share of embarassment. There is also a deeper side of things. A darker side. A side that makes us want to protect ourselves from the world. I have especially embraced this side of myself over the years and really "fed the monster" so to speak. I gained a bunch of weight, stopped taking care of myself, and found every reason not to. I'm too busy, I work too hard, I don't have enough time.... all of the typical reasons we find to neglect ourselves and the things that are best for us. Okay okay, I know what you are thinking... but I promise I'm getting to the point. I have been around a lot of overweight people... embraced them, loved them, and thought nothing of the exterior because after all, "it is what's on the inside that counts." Going through the challenge that I have been going through (and the past year or so I have had weight loss at the forefront of my mind) I have learned something very valuable about myself and in turn, others.
We eat to protect ourselves. Especially those who have been significantly overweight for a long period of time. We do it for comfort as we don't want to bother anyone else with our problems. We do it to shelter ourselves from rejection because we have the weight to blame it on. "Well, if I was thinner...." is our favorite excuse for why things aren't happening for us. Food becomes our way to build a very literal wall that protects us from hurt, pain, rejection, attention, people. Often it happens out of shame, pain, loneliness.... we want to disappear but, life waits for no one. We can't just stop going to work, school, or interacting with people, so we hide. We hide in plain sight. We cover ourselves with a thick layer of camofloge so that we don't have to face the outside world, risking the same kind of intense hurt or rejection and having to feel it all over.
Why do I tie these two together?
Because if I was the old me, I would be eating myself into an oblivion right now. But I'm not. I have not strayed from my program, despite the intense feelings of diminished value (because I am not an active member of the workforce), rejection (losing my job of three years for a reason I couldn't control), and fear (what is going to happen now?).
I am so proud of where I have come from. Mostly, I am proud that for the first time in my life, I have developed healthy skills to cope with my anxiety. I am a worrier by nature, to the point that the old me would be paralyzed with fear. Fear of making the wrong choice, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of just being alive. I would eat to hide from the attention from the opposite sex, but yet I would blame any rejection on the weight. I didn't want people to pay attention to me because then I would have to deal with expectations (what if I fail?), disappointment, and a whole slew of negativity I would assign to interaction. It was just too much, and I didn't have the energy to deal with it. So I hid. I hid under my fat, I hid under my busy schedule... and now.... as the fat is going away and the busy schedule is suddenly wide open...
... I have to be present. Present in the moment with my feelings, with the people around me, with the emotional needs of others....
And I while I still feel the fear... I am handling it. Better than handling it. Successfully managing it and embracing this change as a positive occurence in my life.
It is moments like these that you can sit back and say.... I have really made a difference in my own life over this past year.... and the implications of that are amazing. It is like a light switched has flipped.... one risk leads to another to another... accomplishing more and more and all of the sudden I find myself asking....
What can't I do? And in the same breath, I already have my answer.
NOTHING.
Feel the fear.... and do it anyway. You can change your life if you do it just one thing at a time. Take one risk, one step, one leap of faith. Because after all...
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And before you know it, you are everything you ever dreamed of being. The universe moves all the right people in, all the wrong people out, and helps the man (or woman ;) who helps himself....
And it all starts with you.
...must be the puppy chow....
