Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Personal Positives: @agrrud on Day One

I'd like to welcome Maia as a guest poster to The Conversationalist sharing her thoughts on this month's Down Under Feminists' Carnival theme, "Personal Positives'. Maia is dear to me and it is truly a pleasure to host her candid and introspective post here as part of the carnival. 


Today was the first…

Today is a lot of firsts.

I left a relationship a couple of months ago, the weekend before I
started my new job. Today my new job took me to another town. I have a
serviced apartment in the city, an allowance, a flight home each
weekend.  Inside my backpack - the largest I could sneak on the plane
- lay a coiled string of fairy lights: a home making device.

The company I work for prides itself on its culture. I chose it for
that. When I came out of my my post-PhD stupor and actually paid some
mind to my life again, I wanted three things in equal measures: highly
technical work; among diverse, open-minded, fascinating, socially
capable people; at an organisation whose values I love and respect.

I wanted to be part of a community.

I am an engineer. A scientist. No, an engineer. All of the above.
These are some of the things I am, certainly. Now I work in software.
They’ve employed me, this organisation full of wonder and generosity,
to break things. They trusted my sense in the world, though my
software ability is rudimentary and out of date.

Back home, where I’ll be spending weekends, I have a life so full I
can barely devote the requisite 40 hours a week to work. Where did it
go, the time? Me of the past slogged eighty-, hundred-hour weeks at a
thesis. Past me drove into town at 10pm on Saturdays, struggling
through post-football traffic, to run long, boring, finicky
experiments, week after week. I still work that hard, but when the
work itself dried up, I shoved things into its absence. Friends,
lovers, committees, science talks, acrobalance classes. Being in this
new place will be good; I want to devote more time to learning how to give in this field.

A car arrived at my door this morning, at an hour so early I can only
assume it’s imaginary. I was driven to the office when I landed.
Meetings. Coffee. Whiteboards. Access card forms. Do we know who the
knowledge experts on this project are right now? How about the success
criteria? Maybe tomorrow, when the vital person is back, we can run
through a few scenarios.

We are consultants, here to test their systems. I am learning how the
labyrinthine tools work, much less the client’s infrastructure. I have
a mentor. I’ll figure it out. I’m smart and capable.

We traverse this world, my heartache and I, and learn. No day is a
standalone. Day One is one of a continuum - a community of days, if
you will.

My mentor and I will be working closely. We discussed our
communication styles today, our strengths and weaknesses. We gave each
other permission to be pulled up when we stray from the path of
usefulness.

My life is…amazing. The opportunities I have are tremendous. I live in
a bubble. My friends, my lovers, now my colleagues - all think big.
All have at least some awareness of their own bigotry, and work to
correct it. My life contains kindness, intelligence, challenge,
generosity. I encourage it wherever I can. I have money and time and
love and friends and things and access. I am spoilt.

I remind myself, and the world around me, that this is luxury.