#longwork

adjective [wey-wawrn, -wohrn]

1. worn or wearied by travel.

This morning I woke up the same way I find myself waking up every weekday: frantic to check my email. Its probably not healthy--not the checking of emails so early in the morning, not even the bright flash of an LCD screen greeting me the moment my eyes open. Its the small bitter sinking feeling I get when I see all kinds of emails except the one I’m looking for. Its a terrible cycle, the number of unreads rises before I see the mail refreshing. I get excited. All my new emails pop up on my screen: twitter, tumblr, coursera, change.org, jobstreet.

I look at coursera with disdain, at twitter with utter annoyance, jobstreet with a bitter sigh, and change.org, I greet with an eyeroll. I’m reminded of the question that has plagued me since childhood: How do I change the world? This time there are cold follow-up questions that reality inevitably adds: when I can’t even change myself? When I can’t even find a job? When I know what I want but I can’t even get started on how to get there because MY life depends on so much more than just...me.

I get my hopes up every morning, to have them be dashed so quickly by the lack of an email telling me some company wants to hire me, an email that says someone believes in me as much as I hope to believe in myself. But there isn’t one. And I have to get on with my day knowing I have to try again, again and again.

The worst part is how I start off so confident.

How could they not want me? I mean, I’m me. Their needs are met by my qualifications. Thats all there is right? And then the radio silence follows. And the question echo back at you like mocking voices.

In a lot of ways, a rejection letter is better than the empty expanse of no letter, no reply. You’re not even worth letting down easy. And the worst is for a moment--or maybe longer--you believe them. You feel crappy.

But its important to stop and breathe and remember. This is the system you decided you were going to break long ago. Why are you settling? Why are you bending to their rules? You knew this was never going to be easy. The path untrodden is always, always infinitely more difficult to take but in the end, the view is always worth the work.