In the last eleven years, I have changed careers three times. My life is beginning to feel like the game Musical Chairs. I am not an indecisive person, nor do I get bored with things easily. Life just keeps throwing me one curve ball after another. Perhaps I should've been a baseball player.
I'm sure many people know how this feels, having lost their jobs or been displaced, somehow, due to the struggling economy. Just when you think things are set for life, and you'll never have to worry again...BAM! Sudden and unexpected change boots you right out of that comfort zone.
How ironic that a year and a half ago, I wrote this about my massage therapy career:
Touching Lives
I ruminate a lot, while doing my work as a massage therapist…
I hold the senior citizen’s hands and think how they have done days and weeks and months and years of work in their lifetime.
I hold the surgeon’s hands that will go on to do countless surgeries that will save hundreds of lives.
I work on the eleven-year-old gymnast’s muscles that might go on to win Olympic gold in 2012.
I carefully work around the baby that will be born in seven months, wondering who he or she is, and if they feel the affects of Mom’s massage.
Keeping emotion at bay, I work on a weary body slowly losing its function to a terminal illness—and savor the moments that he is still alive and breathing.
I spend a little extra time on the nurse’s or teacher’s feet that have been standing for the last twelve hours.
I am extra gentle with the eighty-six year-old body in which I lived for nine months.
I watch a face full of tension melt into unconscious tranquility.
I hear that familiar sigh, ten minutes into a massage, when someone surrenders all the cerebral turmoil they’ve been carrying in their brain and body all day.
I feel the subtle shift of joints, tendons, or knotted muscles sliding back into place.
I watch blood return underneath the skin, replacing a lifeless palor.
I watch them leave, renewed and rejuvenated.
I really do love my job
I never thought I'd be sifting through the "needle in a haystack" job sites online, dressing up in corporate attire, and sitting in job interviews where I had to say how proficient I was at Microsoft Excel, or explain in three different ways what type of educational writing I did. But a tendon injury forced me out of my massage career, and I had to regroup and come up with yet another survival plan. Luckily, I have skills to fall back on, such as copy writing, editing, and a host of general office management skills gleaned from my 25 years of professional experience.
These are the things that keep life "interesting," I suppose. The things that make us tougher and more resourceful. Sure, it's terrifying when the savings you're living off until you find work start dwindling, and a little awkward when you meet your friends at the pub and order iced tea (politely claiming that it's because you're trying to cut back on alcohol for your marathon training) instead of a martini.
But we persevere. Because that's all we can do.
My sister pointed out that some people have it far worse...the single parents who are also looking for work and trying to figure out how to care for their small children in the process. The people who don't have a place to live, while looking for new work, and staying in uncomfortable places until they can afford food and shelter again. In other words, I could be living in a VAN! Down by the RIVER!
So - for all those who have been thrown curve balls - take heart. Everything happens for a reason, and we may find ourselves in another situation that is far better than anything we ever imagined. Perhaps there is "work" we are meant to do, on a deeper level, disguised as a life disruption. Perhaps these changes will lead to people, places, and events that will change the course of our whole life for the better. The possibilities are endless.
May good fortune and unlimited prosperity be ours - very soon.
Namaste.
No comments:
Post a Comment