Monday, January 21, 2013

I must be a grown up because....

I ate carrots and rice with spinach for dinner
I no longer can function normally on "lack of sleep" mode
I wake up at 5:30am
I have a retirement plan
I work overtime
blah blah blah

I sometimes feel old. My life has changed a lot since I last posted. I now have a "grown up" job. I work as a Chemistry lab tech. The decision to take this job was a really hard one for me. This job honestly terrified me. I have been fortunate/unfortunate to not have many failures in life. I felt like I didn't know anything and how in the world am I supposed to be a chemist? The gloomy cloud of possible failure seemed to loom over me. I also worried about how it would affect my future and social life. I don't live in the most happening place on the planet when it comes to my social life and taking a job that would not allow me to take random days off and be flexible would be a sacrifice.

After a lot of prayer and thinking, I decided to take it. It was a scary thing. One reason why I am so glad I served a mission is because I learned how to do scary things. I learned how to try my best and starting learning to trust God to make up for what I couldn't do. At the end of my mission I wanted to conquer all of my fears. I felt like this was a real possibility. Then I started on with life again and realized that life is full of scary things. While thinking about this job, I realized that there will always be new things in life, most of them hard and most of them scary. I could choose to avoid them and not progress as much personally or I could do them and possibly fail.

So far there has been some failures -- not catching a door and spilling a blue chemical that I just tediously weighed and cleaning the floor with my supervisor, or trying to pull the tip cap off of a column and spilling liquid all over. Both of which left me feeling stupid and embarrassed. I am sure that there will be many more to come....just hopefully none involving really expensive equipment and uranium.

So I am glad that I took this job. I do not know what will happen in the next 6 months....I could live in Utah starting a PhD program or I could be here in Hobbs playing with uranium or who knows I could move to Mexico with my illegal husband :) Whatever happens it will be good I think.