In my head I was aware of the importance of graduating, but last Sunday I found it difficult to make the ritual matter to me. It seemed to feel anticlimactic and I thought it might be because I had other things on my mind. During the diploma awards ceremony I found out why as a classmate from high school had an embrace from his dad (a case faculty) before receiving his diploma. I realized that that would have been me, if things were different, and I felt what I was missing like a blow. It's strange to be at the same event with thousands of other people and to feel it so differently. At a funeral you cry with many other mourners, but on all the other days, you are alone, feeling silly making a mess of yourself while everyone is cheering. I think the difficulty with reconciling my reactions to those around me, might account for some of my difficulty getting back with old friends since I've been back.
But I am a new person now, as our president, wearing her CWRU seal chain, bestowed our degrees upon us "by the power vested in me..." I now pronounce you "bachelor of arts" and as Katie Couric, our graduation speaker, sent us off into the world to do good, and pursue our dreams. Or something like that. I'm just trying to start from where I am.
On Monday that meant going into work at 1pm, where I began my job as a community organizer. I was sent out into the fields of suburbia to gather signatures and money. I practiced my pitch a half dozen times, shadowed an experienced canvasser, and then was tasked with going out on my own and coming back with $40 in donations. After knocking on thirty doors and asking several people for a new pen after mine ran out of ink, I finished with $13 in cash and some dinner that a nice older lady had given me. I rode back to the office, talked to the woman in charge of the field staff and just like that I was out of a job.
It's hard to believe it has only been a week since then. I've been spending most of my time with a good friend who is back in town for the week, and this has in part allowed me to put off thinking about the fact that, for the time being, my life isn't really going anywhere. It's a scary thought to realize that for the first time in my life, there is nothing that has to happen next. If I do nothing, then nothing happens.
I started reading a book my mother gave me (she's reading it herself) called The Zen of Making a Living by Laurence Boldt. The author talks about the need to find the intersection of your talents and the needs of the world, and to take direction from there. In my head I knew I had a direction that felt right to me, but it wasn't until talking to my mother about the book that I realized how little I had admitted what my goal was. Even to myself. It's actually a pretty scary thing to admit what your goals are before you've attained the means to achieve them.
I want to do economic development research in Latin America. This is unfortunately, at odds with my desire to stay in Cleveland and avoid the jarring that I got in 2009 from being away from my family and everything I knew for so long.
But no matter what, reaching my goals is going to take some time, and I'm not leaving anytime soon. My job search was originally focused on what I was going to do until I left, but maybe that doesn't make as much sense now. It seems that I ought to focus on getting there, before I worry about filling the time. There are so many aspects of my life I've neglected over the past few months--friends, exercise, writing--hopefully, I can use this time to put my life together while I plan my next move.
