I was sitting at the break-room table by myself enjoying my hour lunch we get on Mondays. I got to thinking about how much I’d changed in just two years, where I’d been and how far I had yet to go and this huge smile crept across my face. At 5’7, I’m 38 pounds away from where I once was, 6 years removed from high school and about to be a year from college. In 6 years, different people have drifted in and out of my life and here I am now, attempting to make one person stick around for the long run (should I not run first). I’ve began questioning my loyalty to the things that I once listed as the most important things in my life, often asking myself, “Have I valued one more than the other?” I’m constantly asking myself if I’ve lost my own identity over the years, swapping my individual for a blank canvas of self, letting whatever each day brings my way etch out the person I’m intended to be.
After 6 months at my job, I’ve become frustrated and saddened at the fact that this experience may not be one that can sustain me until I figure out the road I really want to commit to and stick with. I was giving this job at least a year and a half, hoping that I’d gotten better with this whole collections industry but I’ve just come to realize that I don’t have that ‘fuck you, pay me’ mentality and have the utmost difficulty with faking like I do just to make commission each month. By the end of October, I was given a 90 day action plan that’s suppose to boost my month totals up to $25,000 with $19,000 being the first tier to hit for November. Right now, I’m at about $10,000 and with 4 more days left in this month, do not think that I’ll be hitting even close to $18,000 by month in. Ironically, I’m not beating myself up about this like I’d normally do. Now I’m not being a coward and laying down about this either, taking the steps needed to try to get some calls made, some more accounts worked, I added another late night to my schedule and push myself to make 140-155 calls a day. Maybe it’s the holidays or maybe it’s just the sure reality that people don’t really care about what their credit looks like or if their medical bills go unpaid although they did receive some valuable treatment from a hospital and its physicians. One thing’s for sure: I’m tire of trying to figure out what it is and thus have reopened my search for another job.
I stayed in Chattanooga for Thanksgiving, opting to spend it with LRM and his mother. This was the first time I wasn't in Memphis for the holidays. While it was certainly far quieter than I’m used to with my own family and relatives, it was time spent getting to know LRM better and see how much the holiday season brings out a different side of him. Although I’d offered to help his mother with dinner, I found my skills a bit rusty and lacking; I’d never shucked corn in my life and it showed. If anything, I felt in the way and awkward, so I waited to be directed to do other things. With the Christmas tree finally finished, he plugged it in and to see his face light up the way it did, I was transported back to when he was a little boy, small and chocolate, excited about the presents that he had already peeked into but would certainly tear open on Christmas Day without any remembrance of what he’d done. For the first time ever, I helped put up lights outside a home. We draped strains of mesh like lights over this bush outside LRM’s house. It's an awesome and undescribable feeling to be incorporated in someone else's tradition and I can only hope that they'll be more instances to do so.
I’m so thankful for being about to make it this far…thankful for the friends and family that have come and gone and especially for those who seemed to be the permanent fixtures in my life. I’m thankful for life and the spurts of happiness I get to experience everyday, even on those days when it feels as if that happiness is short lived. I’m a thankful to wake up each day and see me, not the ghost of person I used to know, but the true person I’m becoming more and more each day.
