From Great Risk Comes Great Forward

DAY EIGHTY-FIVE: The Pauper Settles In

A weird feeling has recently passed over me.  It's weird because it's so foreign.  It's not something I've felt for the last quarter of my life.  And though I'm not foolish enough to believe it will last for years to come, I can confidently say that in this moment... I'm happy with my life.

What brought me to this utterance?  A risk.  A big one.  When I was a freshman in college - a point in my life where the world felt like the proverbial oyster - a senior I knew from College Democrats bestowed some advice upon me.  She was at an age where the world seemed less like an oyster and more like an ominous void.  But when she was discussing her plans to do Teach for America in a new city she knew no one in, she explained, "If the decision isn't scary, it's probably not the right decision to make."

Scary life decisions are the most difficult to make.  It's all there in the title, so it's not like I'm making a grand statement that will open people's eyes.  But one of the hardest things you or I will ever do is step outside of our comfort zone.  That warm security blanket that makes the day to day easier, but the long run impossible.

At the beginning of August, the idea of quitting my job seemed, ironically, impossible.  Why on earth would I leave the thing that has kept me going for four plus years?  This is what people do.  They graduate from college, find themselves a job, and they stick by it to ensure a life of financial stability.  But when you graduate in the midst of a recession, you get this curve ball that requires a bit of risk.

In 2009, the place mats where set for a life of drudgery for Miss Hannah Williams.  Working in a position so far from my major that I trained myself to laugh every time I admitted the difference.  "Majored in film?  What are you doing now?"  "I work at a law firm... yuck, yuck, yuck."

But it took a low point at work to point me in the right direction.  A moment of realization that spending my life hating the days and yearning for the nights would do nothing but subject me to a life of misery and regret.

Regret: The biggest devil of them all.  After a collegiate romance gone astray because I felt too inferior to reveal my true feelings, I promised myself I would never regret the things that I didn't do, but would rather regret the things that I did.  I took this to heart, but relegated them to my romantic life, as I thought anything else was merely what I "should" be doing.  And it took four years to realize that there is no "should" in our professional lives.  There is simply what we do.

So on that fateful day in August, when the fates fed me a can of unnecessary "whoop ass" at work, I realized that I simply could not carry on in this charade.  Paychecks weren't enough to keep me going.  Life had other plans for me, I was certain.  But I had eked out everything I could from four years of professional ambiguity.  It was time to take a risk.

I'll admit that waiting tables hadn't felt like my proudest moment.  In the beginning, I welled up inside nearly every day I slipped on my uniform and stared at myself in the mirror before I walked out the door.  Last week, I encountered a father and his collegiate daughter who asked me what I had majored in when I studied at Loyola.  I felt ashamed.  Telling this man that I attended school four years ago and now I am serving him and his daughter pizza with my degree.  It wasn't exactly what I pictured myself doing when I wore that cap and gown in the spring of 2009.

But then I added in, "I'm studying at Second City now."  And I continued to recommend some shows to him.  And I realized, I have nothing to be ashamed of.  I was working in a job that sucked my soul away like some kind of legalese Dementor.  And I had the balls to walk away from it.  And now I'm starting over.  There is no shame in changing your life.

And now, I stand as a woman who walks into work joyously.  My coworkers are wonderful.  I am obliged to improv with tables on a daily basis.  I wake up in the mornings and get to write instead of hopping into the shower to go to a job that will do absolutely nothing for me beyond giving me rent.  I have a new show opening next year.  I feel confident.  I feel strong.  And I feel happy.

The dust has settled around the rough patch of my risk.  And from it, the phoenix rises.  Though the future remains uncertain, it's a hell of a lot clearer than a life resigned to apathy.