Like She Do

Yolanda’s got spirit. Some folks in middle age dress their age, and others dress their personality. She does both. Here she is, in knee-high boots, pink pants, a black vest and coat, with a pink beret to top it off. She’s briefly mentioned in the Black Lives post; a regular rider with a degree in law and currently working several entry-level office jobs. Her great hope is to land a single, steady, 9-5 gig, rather than a hodgepodge of morning and swing shifts. I’ll see her at 10 P.M., rushing home to get up all over again at 4 A.M. She’d recently applied to a position she was excited about, and I was anxious for an update.

“So what’s the scoop??”
“No, I didn’t get it!”
“What?”
Her tone is gravelly, but always with a hint of humor, the winking echo of a voice on the verge of cracking a joke. Don’t you love the timbre of a voice that’s seen a lot of life?

“So Wednesday,” she continues, “remember she calls my supervisor,”
“Yeah,”
“So Thursday I emailed her like okay, I’m just checkin’ up on the position,”
“Sure, doin’ your thing,”
“Friday afternoon she calls me I’m gettin’ my hair washed at the Beauty Salon, I’m like wait a minute I know that number, so I–”
“Yeah.”
“–answered it. And she’s like, yeah I just wanted to let you know, we chose another candidate.”
“Awwh! No!”
“And I din’t know what to say! I’s like okay, thank you,”
“At least they called you to tell you.”
“Yeah yeah, but I’m tellin’ you, I’m thinkin’, maybe my other supervisor, did she say something or didn’t she say somethin’? Or did they….”

We hypothesized. ​We postulated. We went through the reasons why she might have been rejected. We considered the type of job it was (secretarial, filing, data entry), and what could’ve happened. What her supervisors might have said about her that could be construed as negative. What about that one time she was late? Or that other time she was sharp in tone?
“Shoot Yolanda, I apologize! On behalf of the universe!”
“So I applied for three more–”
“See, look at you go!”
“Three more, even though two of ’em are out in Roosevelt, I’m not sure I wanna go out that far,”
“That’s okay, it might be okay. It might be worth it. Take the light rail, then take whatever goes there from the light rail,”
“Yeah I don’t know we’ll see. I’m definitely, I’m trying to work my way this way.” We’re out in Rainier Valley at this point.

“Definitely. I love that you just picked up the pieces and keep goin’ and applied for three more things. That’s amazing.” I reflected further. “That’s the way to do it, that’s the way–you know, ’cause other folks, they’ll get turned down, then they spend three months drinkin’ beer watchin’ television… and then they apply for something!”
“Ha! Right! Yeah, I got right on it!”
“You’re awesome.”
“I just play like nothin’ ever happened.”
“That’s beautiful. I, I, gosh, I’m so moved by that! Yolanda, that’s pretty awesome. I’m sorry it didn’t turn out, this one.”
“Yeah it’s fine, maybe I still need to continue to… I don’t know.”
“There’s a silver lining somewhere.”
“Right right right. It’s just like, whatever. No hard feelin’s.”
“Exactly, And it might be nothin’ that has to do with you. You know?”
“Right!”
“There’s all kindsa other variables, other people involved,”
“And like somebody said, it might be somebody there that’s already workin, that they know,”
“Exactly.”
“But they still gotta go through the whole process.”
“It’s like when somebody breaks up with us we always think, what did I do wrong, what did I–it might not be anything with us, it might be their stuff. You don’t know.”
“Right! I said well, one more thing!”
“Exactly, moving on to the next thing already, gosh that’s so awesome and amazing, three things!”
“Yeah!”
“Well, keep me updated!”
“I’ma letchu know!”

Let’s start the New Year off as she does, striding onward, be it through success or otherwise. Failure is an accomplishment requiring effort, much more effort than taking no action. Do it. If we fail, let us fail forward, gliding on with new lessons in our pockets. This is our time, as I like to say. Let us let the momentum of our best selves dictate the pace, the attitude of this new day.

Happy 2017!