October 28th, 2009
Holy Dizzy!
I was plagued by the most disgusting dizziness today. It started at about 9:30 am and lasted the entire work day. I think a lot of people who have desk jobs suffer from this ailment now and then, but I’m convinced that working in legal publishing increases the frequency of my dizziness episodes. Marking up and being hunched over hundreds of pages for hours on end, all the while trying to decipher legalese that employs a bunch of misplaced and, in my opinion, unnecessary commas that impede comprehension (I’m definitely a fan of the comma, as you all can tell by now, but even I’ll admit that my curvy little friend can make too many appearances) really does aggravate my desk-job-rooted proneness to dizziness. Ugh. Such. A. Bad. Day.
Anyway, another dizzying situation is the scheduling issue I’ve been having with regard to the internship. The editor at the magazine emailed me on Monday to let me know that after more thought, she realized that she could not accommodate my new job schedule. But she’d be more than happy to take me on as an intern as soon as my availability opens up. So, because I decided that I can’t let this opportunity slip away, I approached my supervisor and asked her if I could still stay on with the company and work Monday to Wednesday (so that I can dedicate all of Thursday and Friday to the internship). She was happy to work with this proposed schedule, but unfortunately I’m still waiting for official approval from the Big Kahuna. So, I’ll have to wait and see what happens… but I’ve made a choice – I’m going to do this internship even if my work schedule doesn’t get approved. If I don’t, then what was the Big Stand that I took when I quit my previous job for???
I’ve realized that sometimes all it really boils down to is a choice. Sometimes it’s not about dizzying yourself by keeping your options open, trying to juggle a couple of opportunities and then waiting to see which one ends up working out. Sometimes it’s about streamlining… eliminating the non-essentials… choosing to do what you truly want to do, thereby creating a simple trajectory to follow, even if the risks of that simple path are obviously high (therefore rendering that simple path not so simple after all!) and you’re not sure where you’ll end up at the end of it all. Those types of choices are particularly difficult to make… a choice is a full-fledged commitment, and it’s absolutely terrifying to commit to something that’s so uncertain. But making these choices is contingent on a leap of faith that’s the starting point for the fruition of truly remarkable things.
…
I’ll work my way up to “remarkable”. Right now, I’ll settle for trying to ”do something that I actually want to do”. But then again, some might even call that remarkable, no?
