i just lost my job and i am happy!
So, picture the scene: me, 18 years old, gap year human attempting this whole life-thing, comes to the end of my first ever job contract. Is not asked to stay on by their employer.
My reaction? Contentment. And a bit of relief.
I’m not going to suggest there isn’t part of me that wishes I’d been offered the job, because there is. Familiarity and ease are comfortable, and reassuring. But this contract (in retail) was only ever a temporary position — except for some of my (ex!)colleagues, it isn’t! I had quite a few conversations over the course of the last couple of months with people who’d been working there so much longer than they’d ever intended, and some of them didn’t seem to have stayed because they liked it or wanted to pursue it. It was just… continuing. I asked one why she’d stayed for so long, and she said it was mainly fear of change.
I do not want to be afraid of change!
Wait, that isn’t quite it —
I do not want to let being afraid of change stop me running towards it full tilt!
I think it’s probably a bit of human and animal nature to get that stomach-lilt at the idea of sudden upheaval or shifting circumstances, but what alternative do we have? Stand still and hope we can keep our balance?
The reason I am (at least mostly) glad that this wonderful experience of a first job (really, it was lovely, and I enjoyed it!) has come to its end is that I know I would let the tide of it pull me in! I could so easily stay with it because I don’t mind it! And — what if the next thing isn’t as good?
HOWEVER, what if the next thing is better?
What if the next one is a door to the one after and the one after takes me somewhere beautiful?
I’m essentially taking it as a cosmic message of: NOW THEN, YOU. MOVE! GO! FIND OUT!
I said to my sweet-kind-angel of a work-friend, ‘I just know I’ll be okay either way,’ and it’s true! I don’t believe in fate so much as I believe in my family and friends and self to look after me and be curious and excited enough to seek out new choices and keep walking that wobbly tightrope of Experience without falling off completely.
(And if I do fall off, into shark-infested waters or whatever the appropriate extension of this metaphor is, who’s to say that’d be an End anyway?)
As it stands, Not Having a Job is letting me plan week-long trips with my friends, book the haircut I have wanted for months, find time in my day to do tarot readings, and generally get a better sense of where I am at. On a bit of a more serious note, the months I was working were quite difficult for me. Nothing to do with the job itself — me and my family lost someone very important, I was reconnecting with old friends and working through feelings that came with that, came to some realisations about past + present things that were — well, cathartic but emotional!, all while attempting to maintain social (with friends back from university for the festive season on top of friends already here), work, Christmas, family and health balance.
Thinking back on that now, I think I understand the relief I feel today (my first non-employed day). That job, that pattern of living — of working, sleeping, and fitting everything else in around the edges — was present for a part of my life that I’m ready to let go of. There’s peace in the ending of it, of being able to live boundlessly for a bit. Even just a week or two. I have the time and space to reshape my life! Paint over the wall colour I don’t like! (Both metaphorically and literally.) Calling people without scheduling it in beforehand! Go out for dinner with my friends! Learn to drive! Start a YouTube channel? Honestly, life is not ever going to be long enough, but new experiences and laughing and getting the goddamn haircut mean it might be worth all the fear of it ending.
The moral of this tale: impermanence is a kind of MAGIC! And change is, as ever, inevitable! Try letting joy and fear co-exist!
I SHALL CONCLUDE with a Maggie Stiefvater quote because my fifteen year old self fell very much in love with The Raven Cycle and I’m still her, a bit:
“If you can’t be unafraid, be afraid and happy.”
Isn’t that the best idea?
