not bad

Posted August 30th, 2006 by Michelle

I’ve never really known where I was going to be in six months, or what I would be doing. I don’t find it necessary to think about a five-year plan or anything like that. The whole tongue-in-cheek “What do you want to be when you grow up” question that adults ask each other just doesn’t apply, because there is a good chance that it will be something so wholly other than my current experience. But two days ago I sat across from a CEO of a major relief organization and he asked me what job I wanted in this sector. And I looked at him, looked around his office at the pictures of him all over the world; I thought about all of the truly extraordinary accomplishments of his organization; and I thought to myself: yours.

I mean, ye gods, how incredible would that be? To guide an organization like that, to have the resources needed to make a massive difference in the world, and to have the ability to experience that difference first-hand. For that, finally, to be my charge. The thing I need to figure out now is just what I’m willing to do to get there. I’d already be in the running for a job in development in that organization, but the director was keen enough to see that I want to do so much more than that- I want to be in the field, want to have my sleeves rolled up, to be in the thick of it.

The CEO asked a great question: “What is the hardest part of your job?” And I didn’t know how to answer. None of it is hard in a bad way, not really, other than problematic personalities, and even that just feels like part of the deal. I wasn’t able to answer him. When I was waiting tables, the hardest part was to walk in the front door of the restaurant. But it’s not that it was hard, it was awful, horrible, terrible. Which made it hard to do the physical act of walking in. But none of it was hard on its own. I mistook his question for what was “bad”, not “hard”, and I had nothing to say. The hardest part, though, I can say now, is that it is so close to what I want to be doing, but not there, and I am acutely aware of what I will give up when I move on. That feels hard… but again, not bad, and certainly not impossible.

But, oh, the thought of it- the thought of that being my life, of living back in New York, of getting to be there as little Lucy and Estaban go through their earliest years, of being in the city without feeling isolated, of working with people who work as hard as I do on the things I care most about… it is the stuff of dreams. I have no illusions about how hard it would be. But hard- hard I can do.