Missed Connections

My experiences have so far taught me this: finding a job is a bit about your own qualifications, a bit more about luck and even more, timing. Of the three, I have only the qualifications on my side.

Like so many others, timing is against me. One day, news is positive that things will get better. The next, news is that things aren't quite what people hoped. The most optimistic news from the AIA: firms will begin hiring in earnest come mid-year. This means, if they are right, I’ve got another couple of months of resume sending ahead of me.

In the past couple of months, I've had a couple of "what if" moments...glimpsed opportunities that seemed so close to becoming real, only to evaporate like the mirages they were. The rise and fall of hope is a rollercoaster that I am not sure I want to be on. But, with no other choice, I have to ride on, figuring as long as I don't puke, I'll survive until the end.

You know the most striking thing about those mirages? They would take me to completely different places – places unrelated and previously unimagined. In fact, some might call them crazy, and I certainly, in my past, never considered them. But there they sat, like gleaming nuggets, taunting me with futures that I suddenly, very desperately, wanted to come true. In troubled times, you open yourself up to many possibilities. In my case, it's an ever-broadening and foreign landscape.

When I was younger, I believed in two things: soulmates and career paths. I like each concept because each presents a rather logical, cause-effect progression to a future. You were meant for one thing or one person. Find it, and everything else falls in place. Life falls in place.

If you’ve been a reader of this blog, you’ll notice one thing – my life has not been quite what I’ve planned. And I think, right now, it will be hard to find anything that makes me feel settled. And I’ve definitely gotten over the soulmates and career paths thing.

But, as they say, if one door closes, a window opens. So, while I try and climb to that window, I’ll now contemplate a contingency for the very real possibility that, when I get to that window, it will be shut. Not an overwhelmingly optimistic point of view, but neither it is it completely cynical. Because, when I get to that window, I might glimpse a view out that window to a world I didn’t even consider. And perhaps my contingency will provide me with a way to get there.