back to the drawing board

PC: Michelle Bongirno

At work, there is a floor to ceiling chalkboard and every day from 8 in the morning till about 8 at night children take chalk to its surface.

Layers upon layers of chalk, white-orange-pink-blue, dusts its surface until the layers of doodles and scribbles become pancaked on top of each other so much so it's hard to decipher the black of the board itself. Chalk dust that didn't quite stick has piled up onto the floor and on the hands and clothes of its artists.

And then we close, the children go home and maintenance comes to wipe it clean. All the labor and dreams spilled out on to its surface are scrubbed clean in one foul swoop, so that the next day another 12 hours of artistry can grace its plains.

In a half joking manner, I told my friend that I'm going to call this season of my post-college life the "back to the drawing board" phase, because, if anything, nothing has gone the way I planned or would have seen fit.

This job with the giant chalk board and the little Picassos, the one that was supposed to be a place holder until I landed my career job, is ending out of the blue. I'm being laid off at the end of the month. With a list of denials only growing longer by the day and being no closer to a job that requires my degree, I am left soon-to-be jobless without an option or a place to go.

When we heard the news, one of my coworkers looked at me with fear in her eyes and with terror-choked words she said, "What am I going to do?" There wasn't an answer. I had no advice, no understanding and no clue. All I could do was stare hard at her and see the reflection of myself in her eyes.

Being 20-something is very similar to having redeemed an E-ticket for the Hot Mess Express. You got onboard without fully comprehending the whole thing, but you were sold on the idea of going west in hopes for gold and your dreams.

Halfheartedly, I want to say I hate this part of my story. I want to raise that banner high and camp myself on one of those cramped benches on that train and write letters back home about all the horrible-rocky-uncertain-frustrating-confusing-daunting things about this season.

But, then I read quotes like this and I feel like these words are what my banner should actually read:

“Transition is a terribly uncomfortable place for you to be in your life. You will start hurting and not even understand where; you’ll think, I’ve never hurt like this before. I’ve never dealt with these kinds of problems. I’ve never been at this point in my life before.”

I'll be honest with you, I was afraid to call these feelings "hurt." It seems silly at first, doesn't it?

Hurt is a word we more often use to describe the bigger, bloodier, bolder problems -- not the bruises we attain by growing up. It makes me feel weak and unprepared to use it as a descriptor in this chapter of my story.

But, this is how I feel. And it isn't wrong or weird just because the world and all its fake-it-till-you-make-it bs says so. Or even because most adultier adults think you should be more joyful and less frazzled by the whole thing.

There is hurt while walking in this season and there is good too. It all goes hand in hand. To ignore the hurt would be silly and create an incomplete picture of what this season really looks like.

My letters home will continue to be filled with the hard and the confusing, but they'll also be the love letters of the now.

Sure, my chalk board has been scrubbed clean and my chalk is a little more crumbly and broken up than it was when I started. It's just the facts of my life right now.

Yet as I live in and through this season, I want to learn to be more like the little artists at work.

They have unrelenting and unashamed desires to still color when the board's been cleared and the chalk has run out. They don't rely on the chalk's permanence, because they know the lines they draw are easily undone. And even after days and weeks of asking, they continue to hold out hope for more chalk when the big box of colors has been all used up.

One day, I'll be lucky to be half as brave as them.

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.