you are here

Photo c/o Michelle Bongirno 

They say:

"After further consideration, we have decided to pursue other candidates for this opportunity."

"Your qualifications were reviewed and while impressive, were not  a suitable match for this position."

Or, my personal favorite (heavy sarcasm, here), nothing. 

The list of noes has grown quite long on my end of things. Basically, I'm at the corner of Never Getting Another Interview Again and Job Applications Are The Worst. 

For the sake of transparency and at the risk of sounding dramatic, I write this. For myself mostly, but for the possibility of someone else too. I made a promise early on in my career-hunt that I would be honest about this process for those who are following after -- those soon-to-be career-hunters. The world has told a lot of fake-it-till-you-make-it stories and has neglected to get real about how mucky and rough this season can be. The trenches of in-between college and a career can feel lonely and beyond frustrating. I don't want to be another rose-colored, everything was fine type story. I want the it's-dark-here-but-I'm-holding-out-for-hope type stories, because really, if we get strikingly honest, that's all the stories of every chapter of our honest-to-goodness lives. No filters to hide the uncomfortable or squares to crop out the less-lovely; just the reality and truth remain. 

Last week, I was scrolling through social media. I saw that a friend of mine, same age and recent college graduate, was a speaker at a conference. My first thought: "and I'm just here." Just at a regular job that doesn't require my degree or special skills. Just getting denied applications. Just bored out of my mind. Just wanting more. 

After I pitched my tent for a short while in pity-ville and had a small pity-party of one, I got real honest about my "just." Well the Lord did, actually. 

I was looking at my life as the kind of just -- barely, by a little -- and desiring more of what the world would define as success. My idea of more had gotten quite empty. 

As I clung to this idea of just (the little kind), I was basically saying F-you to all the opportunities I have currently. In other words, I was claiming they weren't enough for me. 

How stupid, right? Who was I to claim they weren't enough? 

I have always had a hard time being in the moment. My goals and minute by minute living (at times) can be consumed with what's coming -- the what's next portion. As a child, my favorite questions were "What are we doing?" "Where are we going?" and "Because why?" They haven't much changed, if I'm being honest. I like being in the know, I like preparing and knowing whats coming. And I really, really like knowing the why to everything. In this season, especially, I have been struggling to be content in the right here and right now with most my questions still hanging in the unanswered category. 

I have to make a conscious effort to set my heart and my mind in the moment, every moment. To set it any where else, I become discontent. Which is only selfishness, because I have NO reason to be discontent -- whether or not I have a plan or the answers to my questions. 

I am blessed to have the opportunity to hold a job for the moment in a place in which I get paid to read books to children and hear them say "wead anotha book! wead anotha book!" a million times over. Where else would I get to add voices to the bears, lions, horses, and elephants and be silly for the sake of growing souls? My degree certainly doesn't house many of these opportunities, if any at all. 

To consider these moments "just" anything is ignorance at best. Sure roaring like a lion, picking up legos or wiping boogers were not what I expected to be doing after college, but gracious. I swear, glory exudes when a child laughs. Its a laugh that brings me back, back to contentment -- back to not seeing the "just." 

I know, in a way, I've said this all before in previous blog posts or in Instagram captions. But, these feelings and this season remind me how easily we, as human beings, forget to remember what we know. 

When I landed my current job, I wrote this: Four years ago I never thought that this is where I would be, but you know what? I'm so damn grateful for it. I'm going to glean from this time and I'll be a better praiser of my creator because of it... Where ever you are, lay down those lies you've accepted as truth from the world and find ownership and glory in the space you find yourself in. It's all so very worth it.

In the day in and day out it is so easy to lose sight of the importance of a current moment. If we really were to break it down, the compilation of all these right-now moments are what develop a life. We (I) get so lost in the loftiness of the future that we (I) neglect to glean from what's happening in the now. The future matters, it does, but I don't want mine to consume these days.

I want to be here right now. 

Some days its a harder struggle than others. But, it's a wrestling match worth my participation and the best fight I can muster. 

The applications and the noes are rough. The unknown and the unanswered nature of this season can be frustrating.

But. The yeses are there and the grace still abounds. 

This testament -- these words -- I write are for me (maybe for you, too) on the days when the right now feels heavy and not enough all at the same time, because those days will still come. And though that fact be true, I still push for hope. 

Because I know that I know that I know, I'm supposed to be here -- right now. 

stop acting like you know

Graduating college is very similar, I would assume, to getting married or having a baby, in the sense that you have a good indicator what all these large milestones in life will supposedly entail. Yet, you never truly know or understand what they are until you are in the thick of them.

I left college knowing it would be change, difference, and newness. I knew that my rhythm of life would adjust to a new normal. And I knew how this season looked from my head's perspective.

It's striking how big milestones and changes can reflect our humanness, like very few others can. We think we know, and then the change actually happens. 

A month post-graduation, I know that what I knew was very little like what I know now. 

The application process is both life-sucking and depressing. Its hard to keep laying yourself out on the track, each time hoping that the train will slow down and not crush you and a little part of your soul as it runs full steam ahead. Motivation runs dry very quickly and its much easier to clean out the years of stuff you've stored under your bed, than write cover letters that you know will return a "thanks, but no thanks" response. Or even worse, no response. 

I've noticed people asking me the "are you busy" question a lot more often. Not necessarily because its being asked of me more, but because I'd actually LIKE to be busy. No job, no school, and a cleaned out bed make for a boring set of 24 hours. It isn't a problem that they ask, it just makes a neon sign in my head of this slow-paced season and its turtle-like qualities. 

But the biggest thing I've realized in the beginning parts of this season:

This is the first time in my life that I don't truly have a plan. When I graduated from high school, I knew I was headed to college. Sure I didn't know what the heck I had gotten myself into, but I knew the general gist of things. When uncertainty started to crowd in, I could at least rely on an acceptance letter and what it implicated. 

This time around, the idea of a "career" isn't enough to call a plan. The variables are large and sometimes can cast big shadows onto the future. 

The other night my dear friend said, five years ago we thought you'd be married and settled, but "You have the world at your feet. Its so exciting." 

And it SO is. But having the world at your feet can be deeply unnerving. The world implicates many options with wide parameters. So many possible choices. 

I often half-heartedly joke that i'll take the first job that will pay me, but I also want to truly know that I have made the right choice. I don't want to pry open or slip through cracked doors. I know to the depths of my soul that the Lord opens doors, and I only want to run through those swung wide open. But this season makes for a lot of uncertainty when it comes to knocking on what seems like an endless slew of doors (kind of like Hilbert's Infinite Hotel). 

I thought I knew what this season and change would hold, but daily as I sift through more applications and stare out the window; I am reminded that I know nothing. 

One day, I'm sure I'll read this post as a girl who's too busy once again with a career she's living and say "Silly girl, you had no idea." But here's the paradox, that same girl will be uncertain of other things and she'll be waiting on a different unknown. 

So that's all to say, I should stop acting like I know and soak up what the Lord has to teach me in this season. Easier said than done, of course, but worth it just the same. 

Because life is built of seasons unknown, and by grace we survive. 

the end is NYE

If I could see your face and hear your heart right now, i'd tell you I feel a bit befuddled over the change of what is to be.

These past few days I have been mulling over what to say and how to feel about this last year; i've been struggling to pin point my exact sentiments and emotions of this past year. 

2015 was:

Turning 22. Graduating college. Adopting a kitten. Doing the real-deal job interviews. Taking a call from The New York Times. Discovering a potential eye disease. Feeling a February that felt like May. Competing my butt off at a state wide research competition. Seeking grace. Driving all day with a sweet red head just for Shake Shack. Ditching class for too much whipped cream on waffles. Rescuing vintage furniture from the side of the road. Trying pink hair. Celebrating weddings and mourning a missed first birthday. Clinging to sunrises and knowing the proximity of Terror. Seeing love in the shade. Wearing plaid pants. Laughing at two ever so much in love from the backseat. Eating pizza in a car with a piece of Broadway blaring. Watching hummingbirds grow. Retexturing ceilings and cursing popcorn. Telling the story of Special Olympics athletes. Becoming a twitter-er. Falling in love with yoga. Slapping on a fresh coat of paint. Wearing all the stripes. 

It sounds redundant and pointless to say that change is coming. Because, every single year the calendar changes and we change with it. Its nothing new.

Maybe we don't change in all the big and loud ways every time, sometimes -- most times the change is subtle. But those subtleties, by the end of the year or season or moment, some how make us. 

We pour so much into our days here this side of heaven, consciously and subconsciously, that by the end of the year I always feel a little drained.  The goodbye, the hello, the hope, and the dread all are rolled into the passing of another year. 

2016 will beckon a lot of change into my life. It will usher in so much unknown. 

And the only way to begin is to start. Yet, there is always this moment of pause and reflection as the end draws nye. I love that we as creatures are conscious of moments, spaces, and times. We know we are mere mortals and in the end our time always draws short. It is a privilege to understand time and to recognize its beauty. 

As the clock strikes midnight and the champagne is popped, all will be as it should be. 2016 will begin and begin its process of ending all at once. How strange and wonderful.

Jesus, you go before. 

what it feels like right now

Photo c/o Michelle Bongirno 

11 days.

We are a band of misfits. Some of us contemplating medical school and the daunting days it has in store with an exhausted body and soul. Some of us hold the unknown between our fingertips as we grasp the stacks and stacks of job applications, all of which make us feel uneasy, under qualified, and some what worthless. Some of us are just trying to hang on till graduation, because our minds and souls are wrung out and stretched too thin to think about anything else.

We are all charting waters and setting out onto paths for the first time, perhaps really for the first time in our young twenty-something lives, we set out alone. The routines and the rhythms we've known for 16+ years don't apply anymore and we must begin anew, like never before.

Beginning college wasn't the same as high school or middle school or elementary school, but it held the same sorts of principles that made the transition easier and more understandable. Yet, this time, the path isn't set and the variables are unlimited. While this transition is exciting and fresh, its scary and leaves us lying awake at night contemplating even the slightest bends and curves in the road. 

So when you ask a college student a little under 2 weeks away from graduation if they are excited, please don't expect us to be elated or jumping for joy. We're wrung out, practically terrified, and having serious thoughts of running away. It's just the truth. 

We will pull ourselves up by our bootstraps by the time we have to glide across the stage wearing funny hats and robes, but in the mean time, be patient with us. We ARE excited. We ARE looking forward to the fresh and the new. BUT. We are exhausted. And the light at the end of the tunnel is so close, its no longer at the end but blaring. We are blinded by the impending reality that is graduating from college.

We're sad too. Sometimes that's even hard for us to fully grasp or admit.

We've grown roots and become attached to the people and places, the sights and the smells. Basement offices have become our second homes and tucked away cozy corners of the library are our safe spaces. We know quite well the hum of the classrooms and the people who inhabit them. We choke up as professors, who pushed us and taught us more than just textbooks, hug us and tell us they wish us best. We're sentimental over the simplest card games, because the reality is we will most likely never be squished around the table with these people, our people, again. The idea of leaving this "home" and whispering those goodbyes make our hearts ache in ways we never expected.

Life is sending us on. Its beautiful and hard, but worth it just the same.

We are all going to seek a great perhaps, yet in these last few days let us live in the now.

11 days. 

ends and tunnels

The beginning of the end. There's light at the end of the tunnel.

I have uttered these cliches more times than I can count over the last few months in preparation and as the result of beginning my last quarter of college (this past September). 

I graduate this coming December. December 12th to be exact.

I have 10...err...11ish weeks left of my 4 year stay, a stay in which I used to think would last an eternity. 

I created this blog at the beginning of this stay, in the summer of 2011, as a way to process and write this chapter of my life as it played out. I've semi-regularly chronicled the moments of this chunk of time for a little over 4 years now and it feels strange to be on the other end of that timeline now. Good. But, nevertheless, strange. 

Some parts of me have begun to let go and look towards the new chapter I am entering into, I have applied and interviewed for my first career possibility and am knee deep in the application process for the second, but with the voice of my high school associated student body adviser in my head, I am attempting to "be in the moment." To not rush these last weeks, to not start cutting the strings, to not halt the growth and the learning that is left. 

And if I am being honest, I'd say i'm not ready to write the thank you notes and the goodbye letters. I'm not yet okay with walking away and leaving what feels like my basement turned second home. I will be come December, but not here in the October or November. Not here in the in-between(s). Not in the climax of this story. 

There's still the fresh and eager 8 who make up the News section to work with and teach.

There's still the Senior Project left lying incomplete and ill-equipped on the edge of the desk.

There's still the backdrop of mountains, who are the friction love child of fault line(s), against the blue to be admired. 

There's still roller chair derby tournaments and rounds of BS to conquer in a echoy basement on nights that last just shy of dawn. 

There's still cramped fingers to be had from lectures and fast paced notes. 

There's still things to be learned, laughter to be had, and life to be lived. 

I'll save the nice wrap up and the eulogy of my college career for a later date.

For now, though, I'll live this season. 

the in between(s)

The in between(s) are really hard on me, at least that's what I'm learning in this season of what feels like nothing but endings and the waiting on beginnings.

I'll finish school up this coming December, "real-adult" like life will start after that, along with which will come a bunch of other big heart things to size up and settle into before the looming deadline. Its weird and uncomfortable, to be honest. I've been warring with being content, holding on, and running full speed ahead for sometime now. 

Have you seen Inside Out yet? If you have, you can sort of get a mental picture of what the inside of my head looks like currently. For the record, no, I'm not hearing voices. Just a 20-something with the world at her finger tips (why the cliches? whyyyyy?) and the fear of the unknown all wrapped up into one little body. While college was new territory, it reflected the same sort of routine I had spent the last 12 years perfecting with just a sckoosh more freedom. Now that its all coming to an end and the comfortable little nest I've cozied myself into is pushing me out, I'm entering the real new territory. 

I've never been an adult before.

There, I said it. The perfectionist in me wants to act like I know what I'm doing and not seek help, but let's be real, girl needs some real soul searching and humility to enter this season.

I mean rent, careers, love-lives, and couch shopping are all things that call for guidance. 

I preach at myself mostly in this contributor blog post about seasons for my church, which I encourage you to read here.

But there is seriously some hard core thoughts and feelings left to unravel and break open as I enter and exit the in between(s).

So, I guess you should be prepared for a lot of that to happen and play out through the resurrection of this sacred writing space for my soul. 

Though, I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord. Psalm 27:13

so how's school?

Ya know that question that everybody asks-- the obligatory "how's school going?" question. The one you typically answer "good, busy but good" to?

Well I am here to tell it to you straight. School is quite literally running me into the ground. Okay, its not "literally" shoving me to the ground and holding me there, but you get the picture. I've got assignments out the wahzoo, a calendar so full of color coated engagements its starting to resemble a rainbow, and a sanity that's hanging on by a thread. 

What day is it? I don't know. Did I eat dinner? Maybe. Have I done laundry? Ummmm. 

Is it too late to quit school and be all about that gypsy life?

WAIT, IT'S THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY?! What happened to January?!

Either those last few sentences are giving you a better understanding of my thought process or you are currently concluding that I am a nut job. You could make a strong argument for either case.

If you still need clarification on the frame of mind I am currently living in, I turned in an essay with my name misspelled. MY OWN NAME. Everything else was grammatically sound and coherent, but my darn name of all things was turned in incorrectly. Goodness gracious. 

Most days I am sleep deprived, most likely hungry, and wishing for a class to be canceled so I can take a mental break. 

So this is all to say if you see me in between now and summer break and I looked frazzled and a little aloof, this is why. And if you ask me how school is going, I'll still probably give you the good but busy answer in fear of looking like an absolute lunatic with giving the truer one.

With tired eyes, hope, and a constant flow of caffeine I push on for the finish line.  December is coming. A cap and gown is coming. A degree is coming.  The future is coming.

On your marks, get set, lets GO.