Am I seeing this right? Because, to me, that looks like the proverbial fork-in-road. It's bigger than I would have guessed, but...oh, yes. Look there. My work life is on one side, sneering at my school life on the other. I'm sure that's my district manager who's giving the finger to what looks like my Advanced Newswriting final...
I can hardly believe this is happening to me now. Though my disbelief will neither make it un-happen, or help me deal with it, so I have no choice but to turn and face it.
It, incidentally, is not something with which I ever thought I would be dealing. Least of all in the way that I am, which is the way of dealing with trouble.
You see, for the second time in the year that I've been at my job, I am currently up for a promotion. And, also for the second time, I'm currently struggling with the decision.
That's not to say that I haven't decided, or that I labored over which to choose - because I have, and I didn't -but rather, that I'm having a hard time living with myself, knowing I'm turning down a brilliant chance to improve my station.
And there are many reasons lined up for the chance to spit their doubt in my face. So many reasons...
For starters, a day at work, for me, is almost always more good than bad - more fun than not. I'm grateful to be where I am, working for a fashion-forward shoe store, and I'm good at what I do.
The store where I work - Ventures, I'll call it - is really something too. Funky music videos, neon lights, rainbowed walls of t-shirts and bags, and of course, a savory selection of shoes, from Beat-It red high-tops to sex kitten stilettos. It's the kind of place where browsing is genuinely fun, and where some people work just for the employee discount.
Like I mentioned, I've been at Ventures for just over a year now, and, I must say, I am a rather excellent employee. Scarcely a day goes by when my manager, Tim, doesn't exclaim to me or someone else that I will be a manager someday. That I'm the best part-timer he's ever had - always do what I'm supposed to, great customer rapport, outstanding sock-seller. That sort of thing.
The point is I do a good job at a job, and it's appreciated.
So what's the problem, right? It's a promotion which would more than double my meager paycheck, and all my head can say is, "You could really...really use that money." Also, as my boss is always eager to remind me, it would put me one step closer to taking over his job, and running my own store.
The problem, as I find usually happens with me, lies within - within me, and my inablility to imagine myself as a manager of...anything.
Ventures is a shoe store. It may be an overwhelmingly-popular, multi-national conglomerate which offers singular opportunities for advancement, but it is essentially just a shoe store - a retail chain. However high up I move, that's where I'm working: with sales and figures and consumer relations at a major shoe store.
To be honest, just thinking of that is making me sick. I am no business woman. And my heart truly is not one of a salesperson. In point of fact, I've always found working with the public to be frustrating because I'm often disgusted by human nature...frankly.
I am a writer, and even though I didn't finish high school in the spring and start college in the fall, knowing to what I was going to commit the rest of my life, I do now, and I say it sure and proud: I'm going to write.
I'm imaginative and observant and full of ideas. These are not the traits of someone with their future in retail! I refuse to imagine and observe and create exclusively as a hobby forever. And while writing certainly isn't burdening me with riches, it is what I love to do, and what I'm determined to do. Even if I have to turn down big, fat, smiling promotions to do it.
I want to write, that's all. I realize there are uncounted reasons why writing will probably never be my sole, or even my main source of income, and that I will likely always have to hold down another job. I know that right now my minimum wage job is barely paying the bills, and not taking the promotion on the table feels like slapping away the hand of opportunity as it reaches to help me up...
But I also know that to take the job would mean placing my education on hold. There is absolutely no way to work my Journalism classes, which are smack in the middle of the day, around a co-manager's 50-70-hour work week.
It's a great offer for a girl like me - a girl who desperately needs the cash, and who stands to gain a lot from advancing - but I refuse to put my writing dreams on the backburner while I whittle out a career for myself at Ventures, regardless of how great a career it promises to be. I can't afford to.
I guess what it really boils down to is this: do I want to Venture off now, and work for money? Or do I just keep trucking down the road I'm on, inching closer to my heart's desire?
Looking at it from this angle, I can't even see an opportunity for discussion...
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