Then You Do the Hokey Pokey

So, I've been trying to find a real job. I draw a line between what I've always done to earn a living, which is write books, articles and columns and is something I love, and what everyone else does, which is go to a specific building and perform delegated tasks for an agreed upon sum. Despite how that last sentence reads I've also always envied that group because I adore order, lists and boundaries. Love that stuff. My life has always had very little of it.

Now, if you're going to listen to the manifestors among us, it's my own doing. If I wanted structure and reassurance, I'd have it by now. I must be picturing something else.

It's true. By a very conscious choice, I spent a lot of the previous years balancing on the head of a pin. I was the caregiver to an ill elderly father who passed away, my mother who's now in Florida and my son, Louie while hitting deadlines for the Washington Post and writing two books. The idea of a job was tantalizing but I wasn't sure how to get there and vacate the premises all at the same time.

Now there is nothing is in my way, except the Great Recession, of course and all of those out-of-work people who have been working in a designated building for years till they were laid off and are on the hunt right next to me.

My resume seems to say, 'she didn't really want to be here'. I feel like Lucy Ricardo and have some explaining to do, but not sure how to get across family obligations that I was grateful to have in a flat resume.

Let me tell you a little about these past ten years. My late father, Dabney Carr was an old southern minister and a great storyteller. In the end, he needed a lot of help and that put us in a lot of close proximity each and every day. He had time to dig out some stories I'd never heard before and even add a lot of great details. A small sample: he delivered the afternoon paper on his bike during the Great Depression in Richmond, Virginia. On Friday's he had cotillion and had to wear his tux to get to both duties on time. However, a lot of the poor, who hadn't always been poor, got the paper as a group, which meant he was pedaling through shanty areas wearing his tux. Great visual.

He also told me about how his father died when he was nine and he lost interest in school. He was passing just enough in high school to get to the next grade but when he got to his senior year he found out there was one more to go, just for him. His mother kicked him out and he ended up as a boarder, digging ditches while he finished high school. Watching the men he worked with waste their paycheck on beer at the end of the week changed his attitude forever.

Now, before I go any further about what I've tried or haven't tried in order to get a job (and I've tried every tidbit I've heard, and then some) I know that in the end, God needs to be invited in to the process as well. That means, God may have other plans altogether. The nice office or even cubicle may never be a part of my future. I may actually already be exactly where I'm supposed to be. I find that very frustrating when I'd rather be somewhere else.