Riding the Metro

My commute everyday is almost 40 minutes which means that I have almost an hour and a half to sit next to strangers and think about what else I could be doing with my life instead of commuting to work. Did you know that according to Texas A&M’s annual mobility study commuters in DC spend an average of 67 hours a year in traffic commuting to work?! I mean I could learn another language with that amount of time!! Don’t get me wrong that is not what I want to do with that time but I could you see. I could.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. (For my Sex and The City fans you will appreciate my shout out.)

What would do you with that time if you could have it back? If you think about it, please don’t cause it’s kind of morbid, but if you were to think about it you would see that we are dying from the moment we are born. See, I told you morbid…stop thinking about it! While no one wants to die there is a type of calm knowing that there is an end. And an end means that you had to cram as much life as you can into whatever time you have. I have decided to work during a significant portion of my life because that way I can live with a roof and food and running water but some have other goals. While I wouldn’t mid sleeping outside on a beach I wouldn’t want to do it all the time so I gotta work. Hence the commute.

Since this is what I have decided to do with a huge chunk of my life I have decided that I should make it useful. Learn that language. I tried to do that, remembered that I suck at languages, and promptly tried something else. As a political science major in college I was constant reading and it wasn’t for fun. Not to say that I didn’t sometimes enjoy what I was reading but when it’s required that human rebellion in me wants to read my Cosmo instead of the CNN.com front page. My commute had turned into daily me time. I now have 1.5 hours to do whatever I want, within reason of course. So reading for pleasure has become a thing. (Read about how I rediscovered my love of reading here). I like to think I am using my time wisely.

Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you just want to sit on the train and take a moment and be silent or write a blog post or admire beautiful people you see. People watching is always a great way to spend your time. People are the most fascinating things. From the big, small, male, female, young, old. When you people watch you notice things like how everyone has their head buried in their smart phone. I say this as I write this blog post on the WordPress App. Wait wait. before you yell hypocrite you should know something, I am the writer and therefore rules and generalizations do not apply. Now that we have that cleared up we can talk about the couple sitting next to each other who might be perfect but alas miss it because they have headphones in or the businessman who is checking his email on his personal smart phone and work Blackberry or the beautiful writer writing her life story on her iPad. OK so maybe I just want an iPad but hopefully you get my point and it’s not that technology is taking over our lives it’s that this time could be used in a more constructive way. Talk to the person sitting next to you. Read a book about the history of the zero. Sit in silence and just regroup.

I don’t know how much time I have left on this beautiful Earth so that is why I am going to talk to the man next to me. Here I go…I am going to do it…it’s gonna happen…OK maybe tomorrow. No, no not hypocrite, artistic exclusion.

Managing Expectations

Managing expectations is something that I have become intimately acquainted with. While I am definitely sure that I was better off than many other college students I was irritated when I did not get a full-time job until almost a year after I left college. I mean, I was a catch! I was intelligent, savvy, and willing learn. I mean, what were people waiting for!?!

After leaving college, I couldn’t wait to start working. Getting up, getting dress, commuting, doing a full days work, and coming home. It all sounded so…grown up. And that’s what I wanted to be, a grown up. I have since rethought that but that’s another post for another time. When I first stated job searching I did not hear back at all. So my high self-esteem dipped a bit but I was determined so I kept trying. Then I started getting some interviews and with them my self-esteem rose a little higher. However, that was short-lived because no one was calling me back after the interviews . A phone interview followed by an in person interview, and then….silence. I mean most of them didn’t even have the courtesy to email me. Just radio silence. For awhile I thought it might be me, then after a long time I was convinced it was me. I took a break from job apply to have my surgery (I know you have no idea what I am talking about. Don’t worry I will get to it soon.) Then I finally did it….well sort of did it. I got a full-time job with a great organization called The Atlas Project as a research fellow. While it wasn’t a full-time staff job it was a job. It was around this time that I started to realize that I was not going to get a call from every job I applied to, no matter how perfect I thought I was for it. So I started to not get excited about anything. I would go to a job interview, think I did a great job ( I have become a zen master in the art of the interview), and left thinking “I so got this job.” Some went so well I would half expecting them, to call me an hour later and tell me how perfect I was. Rejection after rejection has changed my attitude toward the whole process. I now apply to jobs and almost immediately forget about them because 8/10 applications will get no response. OK maybe that’s a little high but you get my point. I have convinced myself that the perfect job does not exist. That I will get stuck doing something I can tolerate instead of something I actually like. Forget about loving my job, cause that ain’t never gonna happen.

Then it happened. My negative attitude toward job hunting took a turn yesterday after I had a job interview that may have actually landed me that illusive perfect job. I mean, could it really happen? Could I really finally have not only landed a full staff job but the perfect job as well? I told a few people but then I started second guessing myself. I mean, maybe it was all in my head and that would suck cause it really is exactly what I want to do. I could use my degree and learn about campaign finance and fundraising. It would be perfect but experience has shown my that when I think that it could happen it usually doesn’t. I have been told many times to put positive energy out and positive energy will come back to you but that is infinitely hard than it sounds. Life has a way of beating the optimism out of you.  So to limit the hurt that I get when a rejection comes in I have learned to…manage expectations.