The Liberating Power of Being Free of our Agendas
“I believed that I was the ‘master of my fate,’ not in the ‘Invictus’ sense, but in the situational atheistic-sense: I thought no one was going to help me if I didn’t help myself.”
Photo by Marissa Cristina of STIL Classics
In April 2008, I landed my dream job. At the time, I didn’t really know that — it was meant to be a part-time gig that would help me develop skills for some full-time work after graduate school. It counted toward internship credits and I had a boss I liked well enough.
By June 2009, that part-time gig became my full-time job. I loved my work, I loved my boss, and though what I was doing was work, it never felt like it.
By the spring of 2011, due to restructuring, it was becoming clear that my dream job was on the chopping block and I knew that it was time to move on to something else. I also sensed that it was time to leave New York City, where I had lived all my life. Although there was the possibility of a more administrative job with my company, I figured I’d find something in Washington, DC. I was smart, talented, and hard-working. Who wouldn’t want to hire me?
By January 2012, I was laid off, with no job, just interviews, on the horizon. I moved to Washington, DC in February of that year. I had no idea that I would be unemployed for approximately a year-and-a-half in a city filled with other smart, talented, and hard-working people, where who you know is much more important than what you know (though that’s important too).
THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL
When you first meet people in DC, the second question you’re usually asked, after your name, is “what do you do?” Having met many people, I don’t know many who move from New York to DC to “find themselves.” And I don’t know anyone — except for me — who moved to DC to start a creative career. And yet that’s what I found myself happily doing, much to my surprise. Because what I was about to discover about my life was more exhilarating and more terrifying than I could have ever imagined.
As you can imagine, I was *really* uncomfortable with the idea of being unemployed, not just because of my workaholism and need to achieve, but also because I was (understandably) terrified of financial insecurity. I was also afraid of making huge, potentially irreparable mistakes. There was also the ever-widening employment gap on my resume and the shame of being out of work in a supposedly “recession-proof” town.
Prior to the layoff and my move, I had mostly made life choices that were safe: I looked for jobs that had benefits like health insurance and offered a steady paycheck. I went to graduate school, because I wanted to ensure my employability. I stuck out living in an apartment that was begging to be gut-renovated because the rent was cheap. I believed that I was the “master of my fate,” not in the “Invictus” sense, but in the situational atheistic-sense: I thought no one was going to help me if I didn’t help myself.
That year-and-a-half of job searching and unemployment showed me how terrifying it could be to live in a world in which I was (allegedly) in control yet grace was nowhere to be found. How did I end up unemployed if I was the master of my fate? Yes, I was out of work because I chose not to take a safe job that I didn’t really want to do. But I didn’t want to leave my dream job in the first place. I did all the right things I should have done but something happened that burst through the illusion of control I’d been living in for years.
I prepped and networked and wrote and rewrote resumes and cover letters with keywords and had coffee or lunch with everyone I was told would be helpful. I went on job interview after interview only to find out that I was always the first runner-up. If I was the master of my fate, what was I doing wrong? Why couldn’t I make this happen?
UNRAVELING A TIGHTLY HELD LIFE AND FINDING PEACE
At the same time I was pounding the sometimes uneven pavement of DC, I also started writing again. It began as a favor to a couple of friends with blogs. Then, because I’m Type-A, it turned into the creation of an online literary magazine I edited and published with friends. People started hiring me to do freelance writing and editing jobs. I began to notice that I was happiest when I was writing and creating.
I also began to notice that my faith was deepening. After a morning of job applications, I would typically take a walk from the Capitol Hill rowhouse where I was living to either the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial. I would put on music and pray and think and people-watch. I began to see that the habits I had cultivated in my New York life and career were killing me (I was hospitalized twice in two years prior to my layoff), not just physically but also spiritually. My whole sense of self was focused on my career and when I didn’t have it anymore, who was I? I was 30 years-old and only just realizing that in my dogged pursuit to master my own fate, the expansive life I thought I would find was incredibly constrained. In my previous life, I couldn’t take risks, because I felt like I had too much to lose. Now here I was, having lost everything that I built.
But had I? Though I believed in God, I realized that when it mattered, I didn’t really. I trusted that there was a God, but for all intents and purposes, I didn’t really believe that God loved me or would care for me or just might have created me for purposes I couldn’t fathom. I was desperate for grace, but the grace I kept asking for was a return to the status quo, divine blessing of my plans.
Instead I received the terrifying and liberating grace to be free of my agenda. Divine grace showed me how small my imagination could be and how incomplete was my understanding of myself or the world.
Doors that logically should have opened seemed to slam in my face. Yet doors that I was too afraid to knock on seemed to open before me. I began to suspect that maybe what seemed like the death of my professional hopes and dreams was actually a reordering. Despite the constant, grueling financial insecurity I was living in, I felt free, hopeful, and full of life. I felt joyful even though I certainly felt I had no reason to. I worked as a part-time nanny/cleaning lady/temp/writer, but I had found the peace and fulfillment I’d been looking for all those years in my previous work and tightly-held life.
Then one day, a job opened up that had previously been closed off to me. And it primarily involved writing. I started two years from the day I felt an unmistakable pull to move to DC. The job came with a great deal of prestige. Two years before, I would have said that I got the job because I worked hard and was the master of my fate. This time I knew better.
If you sense a reordering in your own life and career that will bring you more freedom, hope and life, how are you responding?
Juliet Vedral is a writer, toddler-and-baby-wrangler, and amateur shoe collector. She is the co-founder and editor of The Wheelhouse Review. Her writing about faith and pop culture has also appeared in Sojourners. A native New Yorker, Juliet currently resides in Alexandria, VA, which is still a weird thing for her to say.