Trying to find meaningful work and settling into a new job

As a few of you may know I started a new job this week, and, in an epic whirlwind I was whisked off by Air Creebec to the De Beers Victor Mine - 90 km west of Attawapiskat. 

I work 90 km west of the orange dot

I'll be honest, I was absolutely terrified at the thought of trecking all the way up here. I'm someone who likes to be driving distance from my home so this remote fly-in and fly-out type of work is really new. It also scared the bejeezus out of me to have no comfortable place to retreat to once I started to feel overwhelmed or burnt out. This place is crazy, in a great way, and the only thing that I could compare it to would be a bee hive. This place feels like the city that never sleeps - it's got this constant buzz of positive energy that just never stops. There's always people working and milling around - shifts are split into days and nights which effectively means that the work never stops. 

I started working as a Tutor/Trainer at the mine site. In a quick description I am a resource available here if people need extra help with reading, writing, math, computers and basic communication skills. It's only been a couple of days but already have popped in who are looking for tutoring which has been awesome. It's still a new job but this definitely feels like meaningful work. 

I think that was the biggest stresser when my previous work contract was coming to an end, not the fact that I needed to find another job, but that I needed to find something meaningful to do. As I was applying for jobs, some of them just jobs-for-the-sake-of-making-money jobs, I really started questioning how important doing something meaningful was to me. 

I don't want to just work, which I think was a major reason why I was starting to hate my last job. Yes I was working, I was accomplishing things but I didn't feel like I was doing anything. I didn't feel like what I was contributing was making any kind of impact and I want to make an impact. I didn't realize that impacting people was such a major factor in a job feeling meaningful to me until that part of me wasn't being fulfilled. 

I'll be honest, I was totally trying to lie to myself for the last four months or so of my last job, trying to fool myself into thinking that my job wasn't that bad. One of those - if I think positively about it enough maybe it will be enough. It wasn't. At all. 

When I went to post-secondary I always thought that my path should be graduate, find a perfect (or almost) full-time steady job and then buy a house, get hitched, have kids and all that white picket-fence themed trajectory. Needless to say that hasn't happened - I'm turning 24, I've graduated University (with the loan to prove it) and have been exploring my career options with contract jobs doing various things. I'm quickly realizing that maybe a really important step that I need to take is to start letting go of that cookie-cutter dream because it may not be for me. Not (and please don't read into it this way) that it's a bad dream, but my choices and decisions are pushing me in entirely other direction. 

I think though, for right now anyway, that although it's totally outside my comfort zone and not necessarily what I went to school for - this job is going to be extremely rewarding.