It is what it is

I've been realizing that I think about a lot in a day, and it really goes unnoticed, even by my self-centered self. I've been thinking back and realized that graduation and rites of passage of any sort (from entering middle school, to having your first grandchild), kinda force you to redefine yourself, whether you like it or not. What is happening to me, ladies and gentlemen, is an identity crisis. Who knew college life had such a hold on me? Me!? The one who was always yearning for the yuppie life.

It helps that I don't like my job (there, I put it for all the world to see), and I'm doing absolutely nothing 90% of the time, but really, that is beside the point. It only makes this transition more acutely depressing and confusing. I'm sure most of you grads (most of whom actually like their job) would agree.

So out of the depths of confusion, listing some tangible things out kinda makes one feel better.

Things I have lost and grieve over:
1. Structure - I don't care if you went to Gallatin, school freaking gave you structure. There was a beginning and an end to everything. You were given a task to do, and there was a deliverable for every task (whether paper, presentation, or performance on a test). Even the idea that I know exactly when something is over, was a comfort because that meant no matter how bad it got, it always ended, whatever it was whether class or paper. Although I could have decided to end it early myself and take the consequences, those consequences again were structured and known. For instance, if I just walk out of work early without telling anyone and come back to work the next day and no one says anything, I'll never know the impact to my reputation, performance, likability, etc. Well, maybe there are performance reviews, but still it is more subtle. No one generally has the incentive to really tell me, "Hey Xaris, you did really well on those meeting minutes, I think I'll give you an A. You're progressing quite well, you'll probably get an A for the project." Even when I am given something to do, sometimes the person telling me to do it has no idea himself what it should look like, and I have to be intuitive enough to recognize that and ask the right questions and it really largely relies on me whether that thing is gonna get off the ground at all because he has no time to really be checking up with me.

2. Constantly being asked for an opinion/to be insightful - As a student, one is constantly learning and is constantly asked to display somehow what they are thinking. I know in Stern classrooms, the pressure is always on to participate and not only be intelligent but be insightful (it's that arbitrary 5-10% of a Sternie's grade in a grade curve system). Insightful about business? Hell yeah! Some of you have heard my ideas of the sovereignty of God in business and all of that was by virtue of being constantly asked about both all the time. Even in Navs, one is asked hard questions, and your opinion is valued and encouraged. Real world: not so much. I'm lucky to say anything at all about what I think and feel and be taken seriously. What sucks most is the dichotomy of having actually learned A LOT in the last 3 months of work, yet still being wholly unable to feel useful about it. I know actual things in the actual world now, not just theoretical case studies where we made impractical solutions for vague problems. And following a slightly post-modern path, these actual world things are totally relevant to the world at large. I was sort of surprised to find the other night that how the lighting design industry works is totally relatable to the back office processing systems of a prime brokerage. That clinical practice has a lot to do with being a business consultant. And weirdest of all, that all of it has something to do with the brokeness of the world and the healing that it needs and finds in Jesus. I used to think like this almost on a daily basis, nothing has really changed for the structure of how I view business (it's the power of economics that made me study it after all), I just know a lot more, and realize I can't do much at all in this world. In college, between school and my spiritual community, I felt empowered and helpful, people patted you in the back just for having good ideas and deemed you are ready for the real world because of your thinking; here on the other side of graduation I feel dis-empowered and helpless unable to do anything with the ideas I have, if I even manage to collate them and make a cohesive big picture for myself.

Nevertheless, as they like to say at work, "It is what it is". Were my mother to read this blog, I'm sure she'd struggle keeping herself from being patronizing (well, quite frankly, she doesn't struggle at all, she just is when I tell her about this stuff). I think a lot of my Jacob-like wrestling with God has consisted of feeling abandoned and holding onto him and beating it into my heart that just because I feel that way, doesn't mean I am. But this struggle is slightly different. This is feeling a lack of a purpose and self, and trying desperately, everyday, somehow to rest at the cross and know that my identity is in Him and Him alone. This Puritan prayer about Vocation goes something like: "thy love my fullness, thy glory my joy, thy precepts my path, thy cross my resting place."

Point is, just because God holds something back from you (joy, fullness, path, and/or resting place), doesn't make the lies true. Transitions are always designed for character growth. It's like that Craig P metaphor for student leaders. They're like toothpaste, you squeeze them and you see what comes out. The lies (and some truth) of my heart are coming out in full form, and I'm just trying to feed the pure truth back in.