My job is 100% commission.  There is no safety net.  You either take the opportunity and make things happen or you don’t.  I used to work corporate America.  This is where you learn stuff that belongs to your company, like their norms and values, and in exchange for that you get a regular pay check, benefits, and a ladder to climb.  Some corporate jobs require great technical skills, so that you have a more prominent spot in humanity and better prestige to discuss over sushi dinners with your peers and to future mates looking for the right combination. 

My job isn’t one of such impression.  It is unusual, especially for a woman because I sell roofs on houses.  I drive a truck with ladders.  I have to climb the roofs.  I have to measure them, and know how to correct things when construction things are wrong which happens all the time.  The biggest thing is that I have to help consumers with their insurance paperwork as it is confusing for them.  I used to work in insurance so I can do this well.  It is still a brutal job, highly competitive since it is driven by weather events that create insurance settlement and to succeed at great levels you absolutely without a shadow of a doubt must be resilient or you will sink.  You can’t let things get to you.  You must operate from a place of power because otherwise you won’t make any money at all.  You must be able to put yourself out there even in times of defeat and rejection.  You have to keep going or you will get swallowed whole.  Like life.

The reason why I have chosen to do such a field for the past few years is because it has been a spiritual experience for me, and has shaped me in ways that the safety of my old corporate job could have not.  I’m not going to lie and say it has been easy because it has not been easy.  When you have everything to lose you learn about yourself.  When you aren’t operating from the norms and values of a company but for your own norms and values you learn about yourself.  When you don’t have to just follow directions and procedures correctly to get a steady paycheck you learn about yourself and what you are made of.  You learn how to survive.  You learn how to communicate better with people to make improvements.  You get brave enough to ask.  You learn how to know yourself inside out, and most importantly you learn how to be resilient so that you can continue on and never stop, a skill set that I am still learning how to do.  This is in progress.  Where exactly does this sanctuary to operate with such resiliency come from?

Last night I went to a friend’s 76th birthday party for her mom.  One of my guy friends was there and we started talking about relationships.  He was telling me about his family and how they are touchy, feely people.  We discussed the importance of body language in the dating world.  I told him about my step father that was in my life from when I was 4 until he died suddenly when I was 15.  My mother was madly in love with this man but he wasn’t a nice person.  He was an asshole.  He would tell me on a daily basis that he couldn’t wait to see me fail.  He would sneer at me and laugh.  If I had a pet I loved he would try and scare it to make it run away.  He would make steaks for dinner and tell me that those steaks were too good for me.  He had lots of rules, and one of them was mandating that my hair be kept cut short, above my shoulders with a headband in my hair at all times.  When I would walk to the bus stop in the morning for school he would watch me out the window with binoculars to make sure I wasn’t taking the head band out.  I told my guy friend that the biggest thing this man did for me as a young girl in my life was to create tremendous shame, so much so that I couldn’t look people in the face.  I wasn’t worthy.  Though I have made vast improvements in my self esteem from all the damage that this man did as a young girl I still carry some of the body language habits as an adult, and such habits affect your life in all areas from work to personal. 

Not long after having this conversation I went and sat down next to my friend’s mom whose 76th birthday we were gathered for.  I discussed with her her life so far, and her children and what she had done.  She is a neat lady, who had served in the Navy and traveled the world with her husband.  She is really beautiful and funny.  She got divorced in her late 30’s with 3 small kids and she never remarried, all the years later.  I asked her why?  She said that when she was a child growing up she had a mean stepfather.  She never wants her children to have to have a stepfather as a result.  Her explanation hit me in the gut.  Even now, decades after her step father left her life you can see that innocent pain in her eyes, so much so that it has kept her from re-marrying another man, believing that automatically he would be mean to her children, children who are now in their 40’s.  She has not allowed herself this potential happiness because of what role her own step father played in her life.  The parallel between what happened to her and my own life and the default, shitty consequences of such really struck me.  So much so that I blurted out ‘fuck you life’ on social media, while I was heading to The Parish music venue in Austin to hear bands that I love play.

A Silent Film was one of those bands I heard.  In the song “You Will Leave a Mark” the singer talks about being ashamed.  Ashamed of unopened doors.  He doesn’t explain why but he knows he deserves a bullet in the chest.  In other songs he explains that he doesn’t know when he can trust his heart. The melodies are gorgeous and we all dance in relation.  But clearly we aren’t born this way.  Things happen as life does, and our ability to be resilient becomes paramount.  In order to do such you have to trust.  You have to trust life.  You have to be able to trust yourself.  Trusting yourself not in certain areas where you think you have mastered but in all areas.  Trusting that you deserve more, and therefore not accepting what appears to be failure to paralyze you.  You have to trust in yourself and in a world that in so many cases has proven you wrong, trust in a world that tells you that you don’t belong and aren’t fitting in, and worse if you come from a childhood rooted in insecurity and uncertainty like so many have come from then you are shut out from your own voice from the beginning and you first have to learn what this is, and how to trust it so that you can move ahead and claim your planet in victory.  As is the complexity of life this isn’t an easy, cookie cutter thing but a work in progress.  Foxy Shazam understands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg4CPaKzSUU