Life is full of uncertainty. After surviving a divorce and an emergency crash landing in corporate America, I ended up in the field of customer service. Even though the work was nerve-wracking, I could start right away, the benefits were good, and the pay was steady. I climbed the ladder as quickly as I could, saw where I was, and realized that I still needed to be rescued. Corporate culture, I soon discovered, was an oxymoron.
With the exception of an occasional correspondence or process to document, writing was discouraged, especially emails, which created a paper trail of accountability. I sent them anyway and soon found myself at the center of great controversy. My job was making things right, and doing that without addressing the root cause seemed to me an exercise in futility.
“People don’t like to hear about their mistakes,” one manager told me. “It makes them not like you.”
I didn’t like my fifth grade teacher, either: She made me rewrite my English assignments until they were perfect. But being forced to face my errors made my skills improve. So I protested. “But if I don’t say anything, how will it ever get better?” My boss just shook his head and told me making things better wasn’t my job.
Getting comfortable working with people who expected me to cover up mistakes grated on my nerves like had went. I had to get away. Requests to telecommute were met with derisive smiles and a “there she goes again.” I asked to work part time and was told they had no part time positions open. Any request for additional time off or away, in exchange for anything, met with ridicule. Such is the culture of corporate America.
Then one Monday morning, in August of last year, I was met at the door, escorted to Human Resources, and fired on the spot. I wasn’t given much of a reason (in Missouri it isn’t required). Not that it would have mattered: The result was the same. When it dawned on me that I would not be returning to the job I dreaded, a strange peace descended. Along with the final paycheck, the COBRA letter, and the release I needed to sign, I was handed one more thing when I left: my life.
Having a life in your hands is scary. I remember holding my daughter for the first time: I knew I had to be careful, tread softly, and think things through. I reasoned that I might get in over my head and have to call for help. It seemed fair enough for something so precious: This new life could thrive only if I did all the right things; if I didn’t, dire consequences would follow.
Driving home that fateful Monday, I found myself in a similar spot: Though my daughter was nearly grown, I still had to provide. If I didn’t watch my step the security I’d built so carefully would crumble in ruins. I cheered myself with happy thoughts, like the money I’d save on gas, and the ten pounds I’d drop from not eating lunch out every day. I reminded myself that I wasn’t exactly in trouble. I lived well below my means and had invested well; there would be a severance check, unemployment, and one day another job in corporate America—and another long commute, and more asking permission for time off to live my life.
In the weeks that followed, I woke up happy. Everyone remarked that I looked years younger, and they wondered why I wasn’t freaked out at being fired. I told them something miraculous was afoot. And I truly believed it.
And lo, one day I got an email from the angel Rob (from my writers’ group), who suggesteth unto me, “You should edit. You’d be good at it.” At that very moment I’m certain a choir of angels somewhere broke out in song.
“Where do I sign up?”
A few emails and one editing test later, I had my first project. Seven months later, I haven’t had to return to corporate America. Each day I wake up to the traffic sounds of everyone else rushing off to work, to dig themselves deeper into the ruts of their own making. Sometimes when I go to the store I see their frenzied faces and I see who I will never be again. But I know what they’re going through, and it reminds me that unless life is uncertain it isn’t creative.
It’s been said that life is what you make it. A person can make money in between living their dreams or they can do it the other way around. I know which I prefer. In exchange for the sweet terror of being self-employed, I continually find new bounty in the life I have made: not having to wake to an alarm clock, or drive in the ice, or jump off a bridge. And although I never heard any bells, I feel certain the angel Rob earned his wings. Because this sure is a wonderful life.