A job is not everything, but it feels like a Lot

I have a job!  I start at Wells Fargo this week in Cash Management Services for Commercial Lending.  My team serves commercial lenders across the country.  Wells is one of the top five banks I wanted to work for so it is a great opportunity at a company I want to be at.  A big bank experience to compliment my years in regional banks. 

It has been just over six months since my last day at Seattle Bank and exactly six months since I moved to the Big Apple.  I didn't expect it to take this long to get a job but the journey getting here has been great.  Living proactively is difficult when there is no one dictating your schedule or setting a level of expectation for your activities during the day.  Without external structure, the challenge, and opportunity of unemployment, is finding creative, meaningful ways to engage each day.  Thankfully I found a lot of opportunities to engage, from volunteering on the board of a non-profit to taking an online class.  I also have a great group of people in my life who encouraged me with their words, connections, and presence. 


"Don't Quit"


I have a wonderful sister named Tonya (hey sis!).  She has always shared wisdom with me through poetry and adages.  When I graduated from high school as a 17 year old and headed off to college in Missouri, far from my small known world, she bought me a small iron sail boat with a poem on it's main sail which I still have.  The name of the poem was "Don't Quit".  It got me through my first season of college soccer (the first time I participated in a team sport ever in my life, with a coach who yelled at me to do things that were painful, such as sprinting up and down the soccer field in 100 degree weather.  "Don't throw up on the Soccer field" and "On the Line!" were phrases that permeated my dreams and woke me from my sleep in a state of panic for about a month).  I wanted to quit soccer SO bad, but this poem reminded me that I may have reserves of emotional and physical energy that were untapped and it was worth continuing to find those places within myself.

I grow when I reach for what appears to be unattainable, and learn, once it is in my grasp, that it can be attained and how to get it.  It inspires me to continue to challenge myself  and find that next area for growth.  Often the secret to attaining the unattainable is simple, actively endure against the odds that I see in the hope of success I cannot see.  There was a time when I worked a forty hour week, attended classes for an MBA, ran my own business on the side, and volunteered on the board of a non-profit.  Completing my MBA felt unattainable some days.   In the midst of every quarter I felt like I would fail out of my classes, incapable of the mental capacities necessary to write the next paper or solve the next case study.   But I graduated!  All I had to do to succeed was endure; to take on the next assignment regardless of how I felt, finding that I had the energy necessary to engage eloquently enough.  

Don't Quit

"When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit --
Rest if you must, but don't quit.

Life is strange with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow --
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a fair and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late when night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out --
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit, --
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit."
-- Author Unknown --

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