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How do I know/find my purpose?

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  • August 13, 2017 at 8:44 am #163756
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Nekoshema:

    I think I would enjoy a barista job so very much, a very appealing thought, for me. Your co-worker who died, what caused his death? You wrote: “He had extreme anxiety most of his life… I try being happy-go-lucky like him”- maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe it didn’t work for him either.

    What about dealing directly with customers do you dislike?

    Regarding your writing, your past efforts to get published and losing most of your stories: I don’t think the latter is a sign that you should stop your efforts. On the other hand, getting published is extremely difficult and so many, many people dream of being published and fail. Many of those who try are skillful writers; many others are not.

    What are your stories about? Can you share what about writing you like/d so much, what did you feel when you did write?

    anita

     

    August 13, 2017 at 9:47 am #163760
    Nekoshema
    Participant

    thanks. He died of an overdose. Of what I’m not too sure, but I know he did acid and my coworkers worry he relapsed and started doing coke again. I know the whole ‘hiding your pain behind a smile’ but he wasn’t like that, he really was a beautiful person. He would come to us when he had a problem, it was just an accident which is what makes it so hard for us.

     

    im an introvert and shy, so it’s hard to strike up conversations, but it’s having to smile and nod while someone calls you an idiot for making a cappuccino with foam when they don’t like foam, or being told you don’t have a real job, or when I am in a great mood and I try to connect and people just look at their phone and ignore me. and I know it’s just ‘there’s jerks everywhere’ but a good portion of my success [to the district manager] is my ability to engage and have meaningful conversations and I’m a failure if the person is more interested in their phone then the barista trying to talk to them. We’re always expected to be ‘on’ so if I was waiting in line to buy a cookie or whatever, people come up and start asking me questions, or if I’m sitting eating my lunch again, ‘how much is this item?’ So I hide in the back and if I say ‘so this customer was annoying’ I get my manager, or assistant manager [two very positive people] question why I have to be so gloomy. Trust me, it’s a lot better than my last place, but my only stumbling block is the customers. I’m not friendly enough according to corporate which discourages me, especially when I would see him joking and laughing like the customer was an old friend and I just don’t know why I can’t be like that too.

     

    regarding my writing, it’s all over the place. A lot of emo teen poetry, some short stories that ended in tragedy, some murder mysteries, one fantasy novel, and a bad romance. I was thinking about trying my hand at nonfiction because it’s not the fame of ‘oh it’s Nekoshema the author of x, y, z’ I just enjoy writing and would like to make money doing it so I could be a barista or whatever, but not as a ‘it’s all I’m good at’ but more of a ‘barista as a hobby’ because I enjoy all the barista stuff, just not the social aspect.

     

    one of the last things I wrote was a poem series inspired by books I was reading at the time, the best one in my opinion was the one based of Silvia Plaths The Bell Jar

     

    Avocados and Caviar

    The feeling of nothingness
    Deep – useless – bleak
    Occasional twinge of melancholy
    But always this suffocating doubt
    Those distant days
    Of avocados and caviar
    Seem lost – locked away
    Or captured – in a picture – beneath a bell jar
    Do I love you?
    Simple yearning for more?
    Did I ever love you?
    Rebel
    Trapped in hell
    Crushing intense pain
    Let it die
    Let the sea come in and take me
    And let me die

     

    Its not perfect and it’s probably still sad teen phase but that’s probably the last thing I wrote before I gave up.

     

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Nekoshema.
    August 13, 2017 at 10:06 am #163768
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Nekoshema:

    I am looking forward to read your poem and last post when I am back to the computer, no later than 17 hours or so from now.

    anita

    August 14, 2017 at 9:14 am #163876
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Nekoshema:

    You wrote about your co worker: “I know the whole ‘hiding your pain behind a smile’ but he wasn’t like that, he really was a beautiful person.”- I am sure he was a beautiful person even if he did, at times, hid his pain behind a smile. It wouldn’t mean his smiles were fake, only that there was much pain underneath.

    Regarding being fake vs being authentic: as your interactions with displeased customers, there may be ways for you to be friendly and authentic, not friendly or authentic. When a customer “calls you an idiot for making a cappuccino with foam..”, better not smile back, or extend friendly gestures to a customer who just mistreated you, that would be fake.

    When you have a lunch break, seems to me, you should be away from customers so that you have your privacy. That is understandable to not want to be interrupted on your breaks.

    You wrote: “I’m not friendly enough according to corporate which discourages me, especially when I would see him joking and laughing like the customer was an old friend and I just don’t know why I can’t be like that too”- be friendly in your own, authentic way, not the way someone else is friendly.

    Avocados and Caviar

    The feeling of nothingness
    Deep – useless – bleak
    Occasional twinge of melancholy
    But always this suffocating doubt
    Those distant days
    Of avocados and caviar
    Seem lost – locked away
    Or captured – in a picture – beneath a bell jar
    Do I love you?
    Simple yearning for more?
    Did I ever love you?
    Rebel
    Trapped in hell
    Crushing intense pain
    Let it die
    Let the sea come in and take me
    And let me die

    –This is a beautiful poem. You wrote: “Simple yearning for more?”- I wonder if the more is in what is locked away in you (“Seem lost – locked away”)?

    anita

    August 15, 2017 at 5:04 pm #164152
    Nekoshema
    Participant

    thanks for everything. sorry about the late reply, kind of all over the place [obviously]

     

    that was nice what you said about my coworker, hiding frustrations just came easier for him i suppose. regarding the whole don’t smile at the rude customer, i would if i could, but my work doesn’t like that. we’re suppose to go above and beyond for the customer, so we have to act super happy friendly and jump through hopes for entertainment. yes, we do have our regulars we can kind of be real with, but the ones you don’t want to be, those are the ones you need to impress. otherwise they complain to head office and we get in trouble. life still isn’t normal there yet, but it’s getting better. still, i have been thinking about it, and while i want to move up, it doesn’t feel worth it, like it’s just moving away from the things i like about the job and closer to the stuff i don’t, and i want one of those jobs that makes me want to go. i know there’s good days and bad ones in every job, but something i’m excited to do for 40+ years is what i hope for. it was very sweet what you said about being friendly in my own way, sadly my way of being friendly is to say something sarcastic to you and give a crooked smile. [this is why i struggle making friends, i’m scary lol]

     

    i’m glad you like the poem. in the context of the poem i was tapping into [empathizing i suppose] with the main character, with her struggle to be like the people around her. i really like The Bell Jar, but i have to be very careful reading it [i’ve been intentionally avoiding it during this week] because i completely feel for her, one of my favourite chapters is when she sits at the sea side waiting for the tide [why i put that in the poem] there’s been a few times i’ve gotten too immersed in the book and had to put it down. [maybe i shouldn’t connect with a woman who eventually committed suicide in real life] i keep getting these sparks of inspiration only for them to die out and i’m left looking around wondering why i can’t smile and carry a friendly conversation, or why i don’t know what i want out of life. i’m still trying, but it’s just hard when you don’t know how to narrow things down, or where to go. it’s twice as frustrating when most people says it’s normally something right in front of your face you keep overlooking like ‘well then how am i suppose to see it if i keep overlooking it?!’ lol, that’s the annoying part of life i guess.

     

    thanks for all your help, i really enjoy reading your responses to forums [even when it’s not about my problems lol]

    August 17, 2017 at 12:16 pm #164458
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Nekoshema:

    You wrote: “something i’m excited to do for 40+ years is what i hope for”- I wonder if this is anyone’s reality, being excited to do a particular (paying) job for over forty years. I mean, is there anyone who claims to have been excited about a job for over forty years, and being honest about it? I don’t know.

    Regarding you being friendly in your own way, which is what I suggested and still am suggesting, “to say something sarcastic to you and give a crooked smile” is not being friendly. Think of your own way of being friendly, if you will…?

    Here is one quote from Sylvia Plath’s (The author of The Bell Jar) many writings: “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”-

    I am thinking: she may have been an all-or-nothing person, as severely anxious/ depressed people often are. It was either everything or nothing. This quote from The Unabridged Journals: “I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad” causes me to further think so.

    “Wanting nothing” and “passive and sad” was part of her experience when she attempted suicide, finally to complete. If only she was okay with being in the middle.

    This is making me think that the expectation of being excited about a job for forty years is in that “wanting everything” category as well as figuring that the only friendly disposition acceptable at your job is that you see practiced by others, that is, a very friendly behavior.

    Maybe not as friendly as that other employee behaves but not as unfriendly assaying something sarcastic and giving a crooked smile will be that middle, and if authentic, that would satisfy you and the employers.

    anita

    August 17, 2017 at 12:17 pm #164460
    Anonymous
    Guest

    * didn’t submit correctly…

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