January is almost over. My sweetheart, Amanda, graduated from Pensacola State College with her Bachelor’s in Applied Science in Administration and Supervision at the beginning of December. Graduation day symbolized a culmination of years of hard work, but it was quickly supplanted by what’s seemed an interminable job search. As with any situation, somebody always has it worse. Somebody else’s childhood, love life, illness, family relationship, or financial situation is bound to be worse. But when you’re in it, the walls of your problem spin around you like a tornado and they’re difficult to see past. You’re wondering day to day when some employer will finally call you back with some good news.
Pointing out who has it worse is not always useful or even right. The starving children of Ethiopia do put things in proper perspective when McDonald’s runs out of chicken nuggets or you miss the 10:30 a.m. cutoff for breakfast. I often tell people something like, “I may have diabetes, but at least it’s not (insert something more terrible).” However, be careful when dispensing this reminder when a friend or acquaintance loses a pet, struggles with weight loss, or gets dumped. Don’t let another person’s (or your own) more difficult situation make your subject feel as if his or her feelings don’t matter. Do some people need to see the bigger picture? The ridiculous calls to 911 from fast food joints floating around the internet would determine, yes. However, getting a ticket in the mail from a red light camera is still frustrating regardless of how poorly your fight against the system is going.
And so, I return to Amanda and her search. People always have needs. The needs of the world at large tend to outweigh the world’s ability to meet those needs, so there will always be work. People want to know what’s going on in their neighborhood so it’s my job to report it. When you want to move Microsoft Office from your old computer to the new one, it’s up to India to walk you through the process. The severity of the need tends to determine how well the work pays. This is the hard part. Amanda is valuable. Her education, experience, talent, and drive make her so. She just needs someone to see it and I have faith it will happen. The players who never hit a home run are the batters who never step up to the plate. She’s still facing life’s pitcher mound like others who is in search for their first career break. Keep tweaking cover letters. Keep calling and making follow-up calls. Keep applying. Keep going to job fairs. You may even have to broaden your horizons and take on a job you wouldn’t have chosen first. HVAC technicians may not follow astronaut and cowboy in every child’s dream job, but remember “dream” and “career” don’t have to be the same thing. There may be more to find satisfying in life than the scope to which we limit ourselves.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Maintaining Perspective