The Sound of Settling

Saturday, October 9, 2010
10:18 am  Bah Bah!

After tonight's SNL, I will no longer be a page.  Earlier this week I was offered a job, and I accepted, and I'm starting on Monday.  So, as you can imagine, all of this news and change has come with about fifteen hundred different emotions that I'm dealing with.  At first I wrote that last sentence as "...that I'm struggling to deal with," but then I went back and deleted it because I'm not struggling.  I'm dealing.  It's just weird.

First of all, I'm really happy.  I'm excited about my new job.  It's in a department I love, and this job gets me further along on a career path I really think I want to be on.  There's a lot of opportunity to grow and gain experience and blah blah blah.  And there are the added perks that I didn't really think of until after I had accepted -- not being a page means I get my weekends back!  I get WHOLE weekends just...OFF!  What do you people do with that kind of free time??  I can't even imagine it.  And the pay!  Obviously you shouldn't take a job solely for the money, but after eight and a half months of living in NYC on $10/hr, I can't even tell you just how much making more money will mean to me.  Over the past few months my Excel budget has been in rough shape - lots of red and negative numbers - and it's really been stressing me out!  My increased income will certainly improve my quality of life.

But OF COURSE I can't be totally happy.  I wouldn't be me if I was completely, blissfully happy and at peace.  Sooo, there are the mixed feelings.  I'm going to miss being a page!  Obviously I knew this would all come to an end eventually (within a year, for sure), but it's still sad.  I feel like I'm graduating all over again - you work hard, knowing there's an inevitable ending, but when it happens it's still really weird and sad and disorienting.  And then there's the finality of it all!  Just typing that out I realize how ridiculous I sound - I'm 23 and starting a new job - there's pretty much nothing final about my situation...but it feels final.  Like, this is it.  This is your job.  Forever.  I realize that's ridiculous, but that feeling is still there no matter how many times I tell myself I'm being ridiculous.  When you accept a new job or a new apartment or a new relationship, you're accepting the good AND the bad.  There are things about my job and my apartment (have I mentioned this roach problem?) and my relationships that stress me out and drive me crazy.  And I'm agreeing to deal with that for the forseeable future.  And if, in the forseeable future, I get stressed out and frustrated at my job and my living situation and my relationships here, I have no one to blame but myself.  Because by taking this job, I've agreed to DEAL with it.

This whole situation - the great feelings I have about succeeding in the page program and getting a job and having the wonderful experiences that I've had AND the sort of sad, mixed up feelings I have about leaving pagedom and going forward into the professional world makes me think of one of my favorite songs.  (Has anyone else noticed that I associate a song with pretty much every situation in my life?  Is this normal?  Do other people do this?)

"The Sound of Settling" by Death Cab is in my top ten favorite songs of all time.  And the thing I love the most about it, is it can be interpreted in two ways.  When you listen to the song, you can choose to think of "settling" as giving up on the dream and lowering your standards and accepting the cards you were dealt.  When you think of it that way, it's sort of a sad song.  But you can also choose to think of "settling" as finding your place.  Fitting in.  Clicking.  In fact, I think of the way an old house creaks and groans as it "settles" at night.  I think of a line from 'Magnolia': This happens.  This is something that happens.  When you think of it that way, it's sort of a happy song.

Listen for yourself and decide.  Is it happy or sad?  I think it's kind of up to you.

Then again, I think maybe that's the way life works too.



Love,
Tara