Ignorant Historian

Well, my first week at the new job went well! It’s a big change of pace from my last job, but more importantly, it’s a big change of pace from unemployment. I came home from my first day SO exhausted! Each day has gotten easier, thankfully.

A few observations:

• Working for a tech company kinda feels like coming home. I’m definitely not the nerdiest person in my department. I’m not sure I’ve ever worked with fellow nerds before. I mean, our printer’s name is “Alderaan.” I didn’t even know that was how it was spelled…

• Speaking of coworkers: they make the job. They’ve all been incredibly helpful and proactive in helping me to understand everything (or everything I’ve been able to absorb so far!).

• There’s a lot to have to learn (the software and all its functions as well as the solutions to a lot of the more common errors), but the learning is going well. Already know WAY more than I would have thought possible to learn in a week.

• I’m thankful to be trained alongside another newbie. It’s nice to have someone else to bounce questions off of. And we aren’t the only newbies…two more people will be starting in a week, so soon I won’t even be the least experienced!

• So yeah, we’re growing. So much that our department is moving to an office across the street today to a more permanent temporary location until they find a place large enough to bring the whole company back together. I only had my desk for a week, but I’m going to miss it.

• Or not…I was right next to the kitchen with free snacks, drinks (Diet Dr Pepper!), and where people frequently congregate. Probably not the best place to be long-term. My new desk is farther from the action, I think.

• Pretty much everyone I work with is in the same age bracket as me, which leads to interesting conversations. When asked what snacks and drinks we’d want at the new place, one of the guys said, “Surge!” Hadn’t thought about Surge in a long time…

• I love my new schedule. I’ll actually be working an hour earlier (7 AM!) when I’m fully trained, but I’m going to like it. Getting up before the sun is weird for me, but I’m getting used to getting up and exercising in the dark and then getting into work before everyone else. (Yes, I used “getting” 3 times in that sentence, but I’m too lazy to fix it.)

All that to say, I’m very thankful for my job. It’s amazing how much more you appreciate something when you did without for a while. But even if it wasn’t for that, this is a great place to work and I think I’m going to enjoy what I’m going to be doing.

(ignore the smirk on my face…it was early!)

The apartment is clean, my purse is packed with plenty of Lipsmaker, and my first-day outfit is pressed (just kidding…I don’t even own an iron). What could that mean?

It’s my first day of my new job!

I’ve been looking forward to this day for a while. Sure, there is some anxiety of the unknown, but I’m hopeful and excited to see what new challenges and friendships are in store for me here. I’m excited to be able to grow with a company and learn new skills.

When I get a chance, I hope to give you reflections on my first day/week. After being able to set my own schedule for almost 3 months, I know my first week will be especially exhausting, but in a good way.

Well, after two and a half months off, my unemployment ends Monday. So what I have I learned during this season?

1. God is definitely sovereign. He kindly overrode my own plans for my life, giving me something better.

2. Planning is good and necessary, but don’t be married to your own ideas for your future.

3. I can live on less income than I thought. Going to take advantage of this in the next couple of years to save up for long-term plans.

4. I thrive on a schedule and am rather helpless in forcing myself on a schedule without concrete items on my calendar.

5. Just because you have more time to read doesn’t mean that you will. I can almost guarantee I’ll read more in my first month at work than in the last month of unemployment (four books read).

6. My time is not my own, so I shouldn’t selfishly spend it on myself. Same is true of money.

7. Blessings freely given by God are more precious than anything you can try to grasp for.

I’m incredibly thankful that this season is over, but I wouldn’t want it to be different if I had a do-over. I can honestly say I’m closer to God and to others than  I was two and a half months ago.

Perhaps I don’t have a realistic view of the average unemployed person, but it seems like as a whole they watch a ton of daytime television and complain about the economy a lot (wait, that last one is pretty much everybody).

Whether that is true or not of most unemployed people, I don’t know, but I definitely don’t want it to be true of me.

I have big plans as to how I’m going to avoid treating my unemployment—however long it may last—as a vacation or excuse to do nothing. I want to set high standards for myself, because I know that I will only meet whatever goal I set, not ones that I never thought to make.

So what are my goals? First of all, I plan on leaving the house every “work” day. No excuses. Since I don’t have internet at home (though I do on my phone…so I won’t miss an email from a potential employer), I will be going to the library everyday to use their Wi-Fi. This will allow me to look for jobs, email résumés, and of course, post to this lovely blog.

On most days, I’d also like to go somewhere else each day, though this isn’t a must. I have a good friend who will soon to have a baby, so I can help her and hangout with her. I can volunteer more now, and I hope to pick up some odd jobs here and there, which will also help to stretch my savings. I hope to add some interviews into my schedule regularly, but we’ll have to wait to see about that.

Besides not being home all the time, I’m also setting high goals for what I want to do everyday, even on top of my regular goals. I need to take this opportunity to take care of things that I’ve been putting off. I also know a novel that is just waiting to be finished up…

Basically, I don’t plan on treating this time as a vacation. I’ve had plenty of vacation days this fall (in part because I knew that I had to use them up!). I still have work to do, even if no one is necessarily going to pay me for it (but you’re welcome to!).

I believe that God has a plan for my unemployment, and it’s not just that I find a new job.

The binders sure look a whole lot more manageable when they’re done.

This week’s Challenge to Women is a good one. So good, that I don’t want to give it only the half of my brain I have left after a work day (ha, I accidentally typed “death” the first time) that started voluntarily at 6:15 and spent printing, collating, and assembling 65 160-page binders (that’s over 10,000 pages). I had help from our intern, but any day started that early is long. I’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow, Friday, and possibly Monday.

Truthfully, it’s really neat to see these binders come together, binders that we only started writing last Thursday, and were only thought of a few days before that. I’m thankful that my job isn’t like this all the time, but it’s fun occasionally.

All that to say, check in next week for the next challenge. Thanks for understanding!

The next part of John Piper’s Challenge to Women is a bit complex when it comes to single women like me. Still, it bears considering:

“That you not assume that secular employment is a greater challenge or a better use of your life than the countless opportunities of service and witness in the home the neighborhood, the community, the church, and the world. That you not only pose the question: Career vs. full time mom? But that you ask as seriously: Full time career vs. freedom for ministry? That you ask: Which would be greater for the Kingdom— to be in the employ of someone telling you what to do to make his business prosper, or to be God’s free agent dreaming your own dream about how your time and your home and your creativity could make God’s business prosper? And that in all this you make your choices not on the basis of secular trends or yuppie lifestyle expectations, but on the basis of what will strengthen the family and advance the cause of Christ.”

Obviously, I don’t have the opportunity to choose between working full-time and ministry. Whatever else I do and however else I use my free time, I must have full-time employment in order to provide for myself. That said, I don’t define myself by my job. It’s something that I do (and try to do well), but it’s not who I am.

I may “have” to spend 40 hours a week doing what someone else tells me “to do to make his business prosper,” but there are over 100 waking hours in a week. Even considering that some of those are spent on the necessaries of commuting, personal hygiene, and chores, I have at least as many hours to spend as I choose in a week as I do hours spent doing someone else’s biding.

And how do I choose to spend those hours?

I want to be able to use my time and talents to serve God and others. Obviously, I’m still working out how that looks like in my life, and probably always will.

But perhaps one day I won’t need to be employed full-time, having a man to provide the necessities of life. Am I making choices now that will make such a transition easier? This is why I want to work hard at paying off my student debt (though this move has made that difficult), the only debt I have. I’d love not to have to carry debt into a marriage.

I’d also like not to have an expensive lifestyle, something that would hinder me now and in the future. I’m working on ways to live on less, a skill that can reap dividends over the years.

Other Posts in This Series:

A Summer of Growth

Peace, Joy, and Strength

Daily Acts of Love

Women of the Book

Women of Prayer

Deep Thinkin’

No More Frittering

Exploiting Not Paralyzing

Keeping Me Honest

Photo by wjserson

Following up yesterday’s 5 Things That Have Changed since I started blogging 5 years ago, is the 5 things that have stayed the same. For the most part, these are things that I thought would have changed in 5 years’ time.

1. I’m still single. This was not something I expected. I always assume I’ll meet and be pursued by my future husband some time in the next year, but it still hasn’t happened. The good thing, though, is that I’ve gained more joy in my singleness and am less likely to see it as a burden.

2. I still work at the same place. This also was unexpected. After all, I started working at the small non-profit as a part-time secretary while I was in school. Over the years, I have gained more and more responsibilities, morphing my position into what it is now (which is a little bit of everything we do).

3. I’m still a big-time reader. Actually, forgetting the last month, I’m a bigger reader now than I was 5 years ago. For the record, I’ve read 432 books since I started blogging.

4. I still love my church. When I joined in the fall of 2005, I loved it. Of course, I know more of its flaws now than I did then (and I’m one of them!), but I love it even more than I did then.

5. I still live in North Carolina. Of course, this is obvious considering numbers 2 and 4. I have moved 4 times in the past 5 years (it sounds crazier than it was), but every one of those moves have been locally. When I moved to North Carolina I thought I’d be here for school, then move out west. I definitely shouldn’t have moved east if I wanted to move west…

I kinda wish I could give you a humorous account of my crazy weekend, but I can’t. Apart from going to church Friday evening and Sunday morning (followed by lunch out with a good friend), I did nothing.

I do occasionally have lazy days, but this weekend I took it to new heights. Sleeping more than 8 hours in a stretch is hard on my back, so when I started getting over the pneumonia last week (in the early days I woke every couple of hours for medicine), I tweaked my back, since I was sleeping so much. The only way to get it back to normal is to do nothing but lay down, periodically getting up to stretch and wiggle.

So that’s what I did Friday and Saturday. By Sunday, my back was normal again, but I did continue to rest, only taking time to make breakfasts and lunches for the week.

And now that it’s Monday, I think I’m ready to take on the world again.

I’m ready for a normal week, one without taxes, tornadoes, and disease.