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. 

Life update- freaking out, caffeine and freaking out some more

Today I started thinking about something today. Something so huge I don't think there's a place in the universe to tuck it away.

After I got a much needed cup of coffee, I started to go through my graphic design work and think about my future...it didn't take me long to go and get another coffee.

As some of you may know I'm entering my fourth and final year of my degree and diploma program. By the end of these 8 months I will be a bonafide graduated adult. With a fancy piece of paper that is supposed to convince people to hire me so I can pay all my adult bills.

OhdeargodwhendidthisbecomearealthingandwhencanIgobacktohighschool.

Coming out of high school I was excited to get my life going, to get my adult life started, move out of my parents house and break into the real world on my own. I entered University trying to by phone- attach myself to my then-boyfriends hip as we made it through University. We didn't as it turns out, make it through University; this also marked a huge low point for me.  I was alone  at school with nobody I knew and the love of my life had decided some other girl was worth occupying time for the last two months of us dating. Graceful and full of poise I was not. 

I came back for my second year determined to make up for all the time I spent locked in my room Skyping my ex. So I became an RA. I would just like to point out, "how to become an awesome college resident everyone loves," does not include becoming an RA. In fact, it's the opposite. Telling drunk peers to stop drinking and vomiting and playing drinking games has you labelled the college narc instead of the cool person. Even though I hardly slept and got cussed at almost once a shift that job let me find myself. I'm one of those people that when I date I just throw myself completely into the person I'm with. I lose large bits of myself trying to make the other person happy. I ended up gaining a lot of weight in this relationship and relied heavily on this boy to validate my existence. The RA job taught me that nobody is going to make you feel better about yourself but you sometimes. There were days where I was being called every degrading name in the book by bullies I thought I'd escaped from in high school. They found every weak spot like it was a giant target with flashing lights- and they had fucking fantastic aim.  There was a moment where I remember just standing there thinking, "I can cry, I can walk away and just go back to my room and cry and write this up tomorrow." I didn't. For a very long time I realized I had this impermeable layer around my feelings and my heart. This asshat couldn't get in. 

I loved that feeling so much, I did it again for another year. This year was different. I made closer friends but I also burnt out about a quarter of the way in. I got sick often and I was normally in some kind of emotional turmoil. I was a bundle of joy, I can assure you. Whether it was the food or the added stress of the job I just wasn't functioning well. My good friend Kevin can attest to this, my Achilles heel is asking for help. I hate it, loathe it. I'd rather have a root canal done by a blind drunk who can't speak English than ask for help. I'm not exaggerating either. I went through bouts of not eating, sleeping or drinking anything and just scraped by. I've never done that in my entire life. 

So I made the decision to get my own apartment. It's my space, my perfect space. I applied for this awesome internship that I never in a million years thought I'd get and mentally prepared for another summer in Timmins. Then I got the job/ internship. I've been doing my future career for the entire summer and will continue into December and then after that I'm not sure. That doesn't scare my. I don't mind odd jobs to pay the bills, it's after that terrifies me.

Where am I going to work? Where am I going to live? I've toyed with the idea of going abroad and trying to get work in Europe but I have the cat and guinea pigs - can you even fly with guinea pigs? - and my family is all in Canada. Do I live in northern Ontario or southern Ontario. I've always lived in the north but could I make the change to down here? What about out West? Wait, could I afford to live out West....Scratch that. What about the USA there's lots of jobs there. Oh God but where the heck would I live...I think I could probably fit in in Texas or Alabama...

That's just where my brain started. I started thinking about what would happen right when I graduated. When do you start applying for career jobs? Am I really going to do the cap and gown photos again? I'm going to have to move out of this apartment...and it was such a pain in the ass to move in... I remember thinking back to high school and the drama that we had there. It wasn't any less real but compared to now...ah. I'm only 21, I know I have a lot of time left - unless a bus or wayward bullet gets me - and already family friends are starting to ask about boyfriends and clocks ticking. My clock doesn't tick, it's digital and boyfriends? Let's work on one of those and then we'll talk?

Needless to say I did a good job of terrifying myself about the future and becoming a real adult, I know a lot of you will say that I've got it good and not to worry about it "what is meant to happen will happen," to that I say: What if what's meant to happen is a 47 year old spinster who owns a lot of cats who cries herself to sleep over her degree and diploma every day under a mountain of student debt? 

That last bit was a little melodramatic, I apologize. I think that's a good note to leave this on...that and the cat has made it apparent it's le bedtime. Now. 

Night all!

Look! Look! Guinea pigs! Ophy (brown) and Gatsby (foofy one)

Bowyn