Facing Reality and Staying Positive

You can't accomplish happiness unless you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Sometimes the world sucks, but you are not powerless. I have set major goals, along with mini-goals that make up the process of achieving the big ones, that will allow me to gain freedom from oppressive debt. If it turns out that I hate my full-time job when I find one, being free of credit card debt will free me to do something about it.

However, this is not one of those "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" stories. If I am able to reach my goals (and I have full faith at this point that I will), I will have had lots of help. First of all, I live with my parents. I have no rent, utility bills, grocery costs, or laundry costs. Otherwise, all the positive attitude in the world would not help me out of my financial mess. Secondly, the most promising full-time job opening I have come across is with my retired mother's former employer. The Big Boss used to be my mother's supervisor, but now he runs the entire facility, and he has offered to meet with me personally. If he is able to get me hired there, I will owe my mother even more for her years of hard work, as well as the boss for taking a chance on a highly educated young woman who, unfortunately, has no full-time job experience.

So, chances matter. Luck matters. Other people's choices matter. However, just as attitude without opportunity accomplishes very little, so does opportunity without the right attitude. In less than a week, my entire outlook has been transformed. The opportunity to seek work at this place has been there for months, but my attitude and refusal to be flexible prevented me from accepting it. I wanted what I wanted and nothing else. But, confronted with the reality of my situation and trying to face that reality has forced me to seize my own power. I may not have the life I planned on having at (almost) 25, but I can make the life I *do* have as pleasant and happy as possible. As it turns out, that's pretty damned happy. By setting achievable goals and moving toward them, I can actually work toward changing my overall life situation for the better while creating lifelong habits that will contribute to my well being far beyond the turbulent twenties.

By engaging in the life I have and the resources available to me right now, I feel entirely different: happy, loving, optimistic...

POWERFUL.

My life is mine, and it is the only life I will ever have. I am forgiving myself for never living up to my previous perfectionist standards and letting go of my (admittedly often deserved) resentment of the people who created such a shitty job market or lied to my generation about where education would get us.

The take-home: set big goals, set small goals, follow through with them, and let go of the negative.

Stay positive.