Decision Deconstructed

I've been wrestling with a tough one lately. Having aced the test to become a Census worker, (turns out I am employable!) I'm given the role of crew leader. At nearly $20 an hour, the job seems an answer to prayer, and at first I'm high on what seems a perfect opportunity. My confidence is given a boost, I get a chance to polish off my social skills, even my long neglected wardrobe feels the love.

But the demands of the job begin to scare me before the first week is over. We'll be expected to work a minimum of 40 hours for up to 3 months, and must meet DAILY with our supervisor. Leaving the city during our employment is frowned on. In fact, if we have prior travel plans, we have to disclose them immediately, and thereby risk learning first hand where disgruntled government workers go.

This leads to: Step 1 of The Decision, what I call The Seeds of Doubt.

First, let me take a detour to provide a framework. Imagine this life event as the size of a seed. Jobs, money, even the need for money, all small seeds, and us people the grand gardeners. We scatter certain ideas, hopes, requests, labor over others, but ultimately what we turn our attention toward is what grows. And most importantly, our garden is ours alone. No one else's seeds exist. In other words, we are each creating our own reality. Opportunities come because we ask for them, believe in them, or just plain need them. Within this framework, who am I to walk away from a Census job? At some level, I made it happen. Do I now thumb my nose at the universe because I can't fill out my D308 correctly the first seven times?

Enter Step 2: The Head Battles The Heart.

The heart says Working with forms and numbers and nonsensical protocol makes you anxious. Trying to find a reliable sitter makes you crazy. Missing homework and dinner with your kids makes you sad. Wondering what happened to your plan to start your second novel makes you miserable.

The head says Stop whining you big baby, this is some serious dough! In two months you can pay off your credit card. You think every other working mother doesn't have these same feelings? Take off the tiara, for Chrissake! Or, (on better days) You should be proud of yourself, being chosen to train and lead 20 other people. What a great experience!

Round One goes to the head. Yes! I say. I'm sticking with it. I'm committed. But then I wake up on the fourth day of training to find my car towed. I hop a cab and make it to class on time, but I'm discombobulated. I worry all morning about how I'll pick my kids up and get downtown to the auto pound. I obsess over whether this incident is a message of some kind. (I parked the same place I park every week!)

Later that night, after walking about a mile with kids in tow (no pun intended), I'm given the ransom amount from the pound: $275. The tow fee plus a charge for a city sticker. And that doesn't include the $60 ticket left on my windshield. Apparantly the street had been rezoned to 'no rush hour parking' two days earlier, and though the city was kind enough to put one small sign at the end of long city block, I'd missed it. Poof! There goes more than half of the money I've just earned. The next day at training I learn that, in my frazzled state the day before, I left out a piece of paper with my employee number on it, a big no-no in the Census Bureau, where confidentiality is Rule One. I will not be given a class of enumerators to train. Instead, I will be trained to fingerprint other employees and then assigned as assistant to another crew leader.

My doubts have taken root and are the size of saplings. There is only one thing I know: I am not seeing the signs.

Step 3: Asking For Guidance.

Thankfully, there is a short hiatus while other workers are trained, so I decide to tend to my doubts lovingly, even talking to them like good gardeners do, to see if they'll respond. I boil it down: Should I quit? It takes a nearly impossible force of will to stop here, with this simple question. I don't want to re-enter the battlefield. I want to watch what unfolds when I respect the vast, unknowable force behind everything. I wait.

Meantime, I receive a phone call that there is an opening with a visiting Healing Touch practitioner I've wanted to see, who was initially booked. It's an opportunity to be worked on and learn from one of the best, an opportunity I would not have been able to take had I been given a group to train. The session I have with him lasts 4.5 hours and leaves me exhausted, enlightened, amazed...I could go on, but one insight is significant: I'm asked to recognize the way I shoulder others' feelings because I think it will make them love me. Ok....sure. I'll do that later. For now, I've still got this Decision thing going on.

And I think I'm getting somewhere with it. Dropping my daughter at the local park, I see a group of Census enumerators meeting on the front steps. I feel an instant weight in my stomach at the thought of being one of them. Hmm? Is this a sign? An ordinary gut-pull?

I walk to my friend's house, wanting to tell her how I am waiting on "Guidance." On the way, my eye is drawn to the bright red of a cardinal swooping through the trees. Since my friend has borrowed my "Animal Speaks" book, I ask for it and immediately look up cardinal. It says that the appearance of the cardinal reminds us that we always have the opportunity to recognize the importance of our life roles. The cardinal has a loud and clear whistle, and the female joins in on the whistling, which is unusual among birds. This reflects the need to listen to the inner, feminine voice more closely. The cardinal also signals the need to assert creativity and intuition more strongly.

Less than an hour later, I've told my friend, my mother, my boyfriend that I'm quitting. Do I mean it? Or am I trying it on for size? Three is the number of manifestation. Say anything three times and you put enough energy into it to put it into motion. Could it be? At last....

Step 4: The Decision. It's made. It feels good. Mostly. Except for that pesky fearful knot that always wants to know what's next. If not this, it asks, then what?

I flip on my CD player and hear, from the new MercyMe CD, this line: Won't you be my hands healing?

I email my supervisor that I am not the person for the job.

Step 5: Sitting with Discomfort.

This is where the end should be. But as I go the rest of the evening and the next morning without hearing from my supervisor, I am increasingly uncomfortable. I'm embarassed to admit it, but my thoughts go something like this: I really let her down. What if she's mad at me? What if she doesn't like me? My God! Like a bolt, there it is. If I have these feelings about a woman I barely know, just think how much I must take on from people who are significant to me!

Which leads me to wonder: when and how did it become so hard to speak up when something is not right for me, without guilt or fear? And why did I ever allow someone to make me feel that being a mother or writer or energy healer isn't enough?

As it turns out, the job, albeit short-lived, was incredibly valuable. I only hope that each time A Decision comes along, I can move a little more quickly to steps 3 & 4. Ask for Guidance. Make the decision. I'd like to be a little like Tom Papa, the host of 'The Marriage Ref' (a show my 10-year old loves to watch with me!). He listens to both sides but you get the sense he already knows what he's going to do. "I'm ready to make the call," he says. He does it, the audience laughs. And on goes the show.