identity crisis
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been at my job for six months already. To mark this momentous occasion I ordered business cards. It seems kind of wasteful because I have a box full of business cards from the previous person who had my position. The position is the same, as well as the phone number and fax number, so technically I could just cross out the name and email address and use them. And in truth I don’t really meet with external customers often, so I wouldn’t really hand them out often.
I left my old job because I wanted to get away from technical support and server administration and do something more mentally stimulating. My job at CalPERS was cool and all, and the people and facilities were awesome, but it wasn’t all that interesting to me. At times it felt like a glorified version of Geek Squad. There were some days when all I did was stupid stuff like replace keyboards and tell the user to reboot the computer (that fixes 90% of computer problems).
I wanted to try my hand at web development, since I did it on and off as a hobby. But since I didn’t have much actual work experience in it, except for one summer internship during college, I didn’t get much response from employers. So I was pretty blessed to get my job here. Not only did they hire me without much work experience, they paid to send me to training. I guess I should have been more thankful, but I was greedy, already thinking about the next step in the career ladder. I didn’t expect to stay at this job long, I planned to just stay until I found another job that paid higher somewhere else.
Looking back, all the jobs I’ve had have been a blessing. I’ve had some pretty awesome ones. The first job I had right out of high school was as a video game tester, a dream job for almost any guy. I can honestly say that I’ve never had a crappy job. I didn’t really realize that until I looked back and thought about all my blessings.
We are all blessed in many ways, but we often don’t realize it. Instead we are greedy, always wanting more, never content with what we have. I think a lot of our life is controlled by our attitude. I read this quote this morning that sums up what I’m trying to say better than I could have.
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.
-Charles Swindoll
And so I guess that leaves us with a sort of identity crisis. Do we want to be known as a cynical, negative person? Or do we want to be positive, upbeat and encouraging? We have that choice each day.
