“If you’re going to go through hell I suggest you come back learning something.” ~ Drew Barrymore
As I approach the six month mark of my freelance life, I’m continuing to interview for additional contract work. Last week I was at an interview where someone commented about my ill-fated timing of joining a financial services firm in August of 2008. I joined 5 weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed and hell broke loose in the financial markets. I was given two months, $200,000, and told to get a product out the door to customers by Thanksgiving or I would be fired. (These were my VP’s actual words. I’m happy to report he’s no longer with the company wreaking havoc.)
To be clear, it was an awful time for everyone. Whether you lost your job or kept your job, no one was having fun. In that moment, I had to make a choice. I could be terrified of joining the deep ranks of unemployment or I could vow to learn something amidst the chaos and uncertainty. Through no planning on my part, I had a front row seat to the recession whether I liked it or not. It was a tremendous, if strenuous, period of personal and professional growth.
In the depths of the recession, I sowed the seeds that ultimately allowed me to try my hand at this freelance life. Without that time of great difficulty, I might still be whiling away my time in cubicle land simply out of comfort. This isn’t a bad thing; it just isn’t the right thing for me. The discomfort I experienced in that job caused me to build a new plan. I am meant to walk a different path and it isn’t better than working at a big corporation. It’s only better for me.
I wouldn’t wish those days on anyone. There were times that I went to bed crying only to wake up with an even heavier heart. To get through that time, I actually wrote out a list of the positive things about my job and taped it above the lock on my front door so I would actually go to work instead of hiding under my bed. It was a short but poignant list that included items like “you’re getting a paycheck” and “you have health insurance”. Yes, it had actually come down to that, and it was depressing to say the least.
I don’t tell you this because I want you to feel badly for me. I was fine then, I’m fine now, and no matter what, I will always be fine. I tell you this story because I don’t want you to feel alone, ever.
Maybe you’re going through hell now, right this very moment. Maybe you’ve gone through hell several times over. Maybe your days of hell have not yet arrived. As far as I know, everyone who’s ever lived has had at least one royally awful day in their lives. I think when we’re born into this world, we sign some type of contract that requires at least a brush with hardship at some point. It’s a raw deal, I know. I feel your pain, literally and figuratively.
I don’t want to go all Pollyanna on you, mostly because it drives me crazy when people do that to me. You know the type – the people who think that if they don’t talk about tough times that somehow they’re immune to them. (To make lemonade, you actually do have to acknowledge the lemons.) But I do want you to hear a very honest and straightforward truth – without darkness, we never fully appreciate the light. We can’t. Our screwy, beautiful, human minds need contrast in order to drive toward understanding. I wish it weren’t true but I didn’t build the human mind so I refuse to take responsibility for any craziness except my own.
I can extend a very sincere “I hear ya” in your direction. The whole world’s gone crackers. It’s going to continue in that direction and we’re going to get caught in the cross-fire. Some of that’s not our fault and some of it is by our own design. It doesn’t matter. We’re all in it together and while we’re hanging around in this plane of existence, we might as well learn all we can. At every moment, there’s a teaching available to us, some wisdom that is meant for us. Our only job is to tap into that, take note, and use that knowledge at a future, to-be-determined date.
Learn, learn, learn. It’s the only way to keep your sanity, sense of purpose, and stamina. And if we’re going to get to a better tomorrow, we need those three things in great abundance.
Christa Avampato 