Change Is Good

I remember a conversation I had many years ago with a friend of mine from high school. I'd just had a huge fight with my mom about going home during my break between my summer co-op & my second fall semester in college. I called him crying because my mother had insulted me & hung up on me when I told her I wasn't going home but instead was going to stay at another friend's house until school started. She didn't understand why I wasn't coming home and was afraid I was sleeping with the friend (a guy I wasn't attracted to at all). While whining on the phone to my friend from high school, he told me to stop crying, calm down, and take a hot shower. The last thing he said has been etched in my mind ever since, "Change your sheets, it will change your life!" I did just what he told me to do and slept much better that night. I was reminded of that today when my Red Hat Society Queen Mutha told me I am bitter about my current situation.

I'd been complaining to her that I hate it here and had originally planned to stay only 2-3 years (it's going on 8). I shared that I really don't like my boss's management style (I'm not the only one) after he presented me with more work today that I don't want to do. I told her that I'm tired of living here and all of my reasons for coming here are gone (when I moved here I was 23, newly divorced, thought New Orleans would be a great place to "sow my oats" since I'd never really had an adolescence). Now that the city's been devastated by Katrina, the men who were here before were trifling anyway, and I reached my social menapause about half way through Shorty's time away, I'm feeling like it's time for a change in my life. This all comes together with what my tech friend from work said to me a couple of months ago when I was contemplating whether I should go technical or management. I told her that I didn't want to go into management because it's like having more children, and at such a young age, I've had enough of managing other people's development. My tech friend said, "I think you need to change your attitude." She was right. They're all right.

Change is good. I change my hair all the time, I change my interests pretty frequently as well, and it's time for me to change my attitude. I've been looking at living in NO as a sort of imprisonment where a move to corporate will be my liberation and a sign of success. The truth is, living here now is an opportunity for me to learn to look at the bright side of life in the midst of all the things I don't like. And having a positive attitude is the foundation of any real success in business & in life.