The Best Things In Life Return

A recent Time Magazine article had a lead stating that nine out of 10 Americans are moderately or very satisfied with their jobs.

I am beamingly happy to say that I am now one of those nine Americans.

After 54 weeks of piecing together part time jobs, mashing schedules of two and three positions like stubborn middle-of-the-puzzle jigsaw pieces, I landed a real, adult, full-time, salaried and benefitted career.

Just two weeks over a year since graduating from the University of Portland, I (siiiiigh) sold my journalism loving and writing soul to the world of marketing.

And after three weeks of writing scripts and taglines and calls to action, I couldn’t be happier. Apparently, 42.29 percent of my fellow advertising cohorts are also like me, very happy.

It’s a bit odd; so many Websites, journals and articles say that the key to happiness isn’t about having a job or money or financial security but I have to admit, after a tumultuous post-graduation year of paycheck to paycheck survival, my happiness increased 10 fold thanks to this job.

Most of those Websites, journals and articles that pop up on Google results say that true happiness comes from inner peace. But who’s to say that having a job you love isn’t a key piece to having inner happiness?

If I look back at the first year after graduation, it’s easy to complain, whine and cry that the environment I was so readily tossed into was totally and completely unfair. It wasn’t ready for me (Ahem, 12 percent unemployment in Multnomah County alone) and I wasn’t ready for it (Real world, say whaaaaaa?).

It’s easy to say that nobody handed me lemons.

It’s easier to say that if, by freak chance, lemons came my way, I never made lemonade.

Rather, for the first time in my life, I morphed into someone who tossed lemons aside when they came,

mistaking them for some type of mirage of bitter nourishment. I became a reactive individual, clamoring to keep my head just enough above the water to take a hopeful deep breath, rather than the proactive go-getter I had spent the last 23 years of my life as.

I found though, that I wasn’t the only person. A colleague at Pottery Barn waited two years before grabbing a secretarial/receptionist position with the Portland Youth Philharmonic (YAY Jason!!!). A fellow UP alumni who graduated in 2005 with a mechanical engineering degree still can’t find a job in his field after being laid off 15 months ago and now toils away in his garden, blogging about his agricultural adventures in unemployment.

Idleness wore us down.  Paycheck-to-paycheck living wore us down. The American Dream? Ha. Inner Peace? Puh-lease.

But like any period of struggle and strife, I admit that I’ve morphed, and perhaps even grown, as a person. For the first time in my life I am truly independent. While I may have resented my parents last winter for letting their baby girl go without a meal or two, I’m thankful that I’ve learned the masterful art of frugality and budget balancing (how many 20-somethings do you know with that talent?). With a bum hip still bumming me out, I transferred my strained love-hate relationship with running into a fascinating hobby of urban walking, checking out my neighborhood with Walker over a cup of coffee. 

Over the past year, despite EVERYTHING (break ups, shingles, firings, cancer, etc), I’ve somehow managed to become this slightly normal, uber-confident young Portlander.

I happily became…wait for it…an adult.

Whoa.

On an end note; I almost feel bad for the other guy who was hired with me. The 23-year-old landed this scriptwriting position, snatched up the American Dream, with three weeks of his collegiate career left. He won’t have to worry about how to pay rent, how to buy food, how to survive from one day to the next without losing his mind. Part of me, that girl who I used to be 12 months ago, is insanely jealous of him. But the majority of me? The woman I am now hopes the best for him, knowing that he won’t get the opportunity to grow, mature and learn about his self the way I was forced to.

He might not enjoy those lemons as much.