I studied the lives of great men and famous women; and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work. — Harry S. Truman

I am grateful for a job.

I have done many things in my life, my first real job was in a theme park, I have done stand up comedy, I worked in the commercial / film business in Hollywood, I managed for Taco Bell, and I have been an entrepreneur, so why am I working at Starbucks. Well, because that is exactly the job I focused on when creating my present reality, and it is the job I manifested.

The last two years was pretty tough for me, when my business went under I lost much more than my house or money. I lost my self-esteem, my sense of worth, I lost my way. Believe me when I say that I have had much better job offers, much higher paying job offers, one job in fact would have been considered a dream job, but when you come to expect anything and everything bad that can happen will happen, then that’s exactly what happens.

The important lesson I am learning now does not need to be lost in me crying over spilled milk and rehashing all the bad that has happened to me. I am being forced to learn a number of valuable lessons here.

I Am Not So Special

Jim pointed this out to me awhile back when telling me the story about how he ended up working as a dishwasher / busboy in his late 20’s. He came to realize that it wasn’t important what the job was, just that he get back to work and this is something I came to realize too.

That is not to say that pride never came into play this last week when I was out job hunting. There are two incidents that stand out this last week that honestly made me feel like such a loser, one was a job interview as a runner, the other was walking into a pizza place to get an application.

During the job interview for the job as a runner as my prospective employer looked over my application I could hear every thought pouring out of his mind. He looked at me as if to say. “This guy is not a felon, nor is he illegal, his scheduling conflicts don’t include attending AA or NA meetings, either he’s over qualified, or he’s so messed up I don’t want to know what’s wrong with him.”

I am of course over qualified. Any intelligent person would know that I was not going to be sticking with that job for very long, it is just a brief layover until I find something better.

The second incident involved the pizza joint. I was driving by when I saw this huge sign that read, “Now Hiring!” I pulled out front and told myself, “I’m going in and getting a job.” As I walked in the first thing I saw was some young girl about twenty-one standing behind the counter, she was the manager. She was busy teaching some sixteen year old girl how to work the register, and watching over them was the guy who held the position I was applying for. “Loser.” You know the guy who’s made so many wrong decisions in his life that at twenty-seven he’s working at a pizza place.

That was the biggest problem he was at most twenty-seven, and here I am at forty-one applying for a job. At forty-one if you are working at a pizza joint as a delivery guy, you are no longer just a loser, but you are either the guy wearing an ankle monitor while on parole, or are by law prohibited from working with children. Stunned by this turn of events I used one of my best talents which is thinking on my feet and said. “I just came in for a menu, thanks!” And as quickly as I entered their lives I was gone.

Grow Up

Time to grow up. Realizing I’m not so special is the first step, now grow up, man up and get a damn job no matter what it is.

Goal Setting

I have difficulty in goal setting which I will be delving into more thoroughly at a later date. Just a quick touch on the subject. I have a problem figuring out how to get from A-Z by going through all the necessary steps in between. In other words to go from A to Z you sometimes have to go A to B, B to C etc. Me, I want to skip all the stuff in the middle and just get to Z. I want to go from not having a job, to earning $75K a year with a corner office and killer health plan. That’s just not going to happen right now.

What this does it essentially freezes me in place. I can’t seem to see how to get where it is I want to be, but in keeping with my new work on self-improvement, goal setting is something I’m really working on learning to do better.

The jobs at Starbucks is just one step in that journey of a thousand, it is not the destination. But it is the job that I wanted, it is the job that I created for my new reality. I knew I was getting this job, in fact I debated with myself all week whether or not I should even go through the motions of looking for another job. I did, I applied for a number of jobs, in person, and on line. I’ve even sent out writing samples to local companies needing bloggers for entertainment sites. I haven’t heard back from any of those.

But as I drove by Vons the other day something said, “Cary go inside they need you.” So I walked in and asked if they were hiring, and they were. I knew right away the way the manager was looking at me that the job was already mine, I had even told my roommate that I was getting the job. I went in for the obligatory interview, and before I sat down, once again I knew the job was mine, and it was. I start work once the drug screen shows up negative.

To sum it all up…

I of course have much loftier goals than Starbucks, but more importantly I had goals, and one was to just get a job, so with that in mind…”do you want whip cream on that?”

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