Keep on the Sunny Side, Always on the Sunny Side

So something happened this fall that probably should be a big deal but isn’t really affecting me the way it perhaps should.

There’s that word again. “Should.” Let’s scratch that first sentence and start over, shall we?

Losing my job

I’ll be blunt: I was terminated from one of my jobs this month. Or at least I think I was. And by “job,” I mean just that — not my career as a bookstore owner (that’s going strong, thank you very much), but my part-time, get-the-bills-paid job as an editor. And since my company is headquartered in a place where English isn’t the native language, communication is sometimes a bit unclear. And this means that, two weeks after receiving a letter from my supervisor, I’m still not quite sure if I was fired or not.

My first reaction was to laugh. Strange, I know. Due to politeness as well as confidentiality reasons, I won’t go into detail here, but suffice it to say my getting canned is a little bit ridiculous. I guess I should be grateful that I’ve gone 32 years without ever having been “let go” before, and I am grateful that this part-time job has provided the majority of my income for the last few years. It was a good opportunity and I learned a lot, but it’s true that I’ve been working on a way to get out of it within the first 1-3 years of opening the bookshop. And, lo and behold, I get (what might have been) a termination letter on the one-year anniversary of my bookshop’s opening.

Trying to follow the script

At one point just an hour or two after reading the gloom & doom note from headquarters, I decided I should maybe be sad, cause aren’t you supposed to be upset when you’re fired, even if you know it’s not a result of anything you did? I went to Jim and nuzzled in for a hug, trying to get my eyes to tear up. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Um, trying to be sad…I guess?” I said with a laugh as I pulled away from the hug.

Sometimes there are no scripts for moments like this, and sometimes passages in life that are big deals to some people (or even to you at some other time) aren’t really that big a deal at all for you. So I’m trying to see this as a chance for more free time, a chance to focus on bookshop work, migraine advocacy, and maybe even a little writing. I’m trying to see this as an opportunity.

When’s the last time you chose to look on the sunny side of a frustrating situation? What lemonade have you made out of the lemons life has given you?