Gut Knowledge

One summer my mom insisted that I find a job. I was in high school, just finished the third year of HS and at loose ends, hoping to spend some time vegging, reading books and going for bike rides. She pushed, nagged, badgered until I painstakingly wrote a resume, feeling monumentally insecure about everything I was writing down, dressed up and started walking up and down Yonge St, handing out my resume in every place that looked remotely like it might be hiring at some point. It was grueling. I did it.

We were immigrants, in our third year in Canada and mom had heard that all high school kids have summer jobs. I hadn’t heard about that, but knew some friends who had jobs in coffee shops or other neat places like that and didn’t mind, in theory, the idea of working someplace during the summer.

Writing a resume was an exercise in trying to look for my nose or lips without a mirror. I had no idea how I was going to describe my skills or what abilities I had gleaned from my first job as a filing clerk at a car dealership in the neighbourhood. At that time, I had very little self-knowledge and still carried the cultural attitude from my culture of birth that it’s not appropriate to show off or toot your own horn. Brilliance should shine on its own, if I was good enough I will be noticed by those around me and carried on the merits of my achievements. Yeah, right.

In the end, the resume got written in blood, sweat and tears. For the next 20 years, resume writing will always represent a huge pain and remind me of all the gut wrenching guilt, shame and diminishing of my accomplishments that I felt when I was writing that first resume. The impostor syndrome was real even back then which makes me wonder how it’s connected to a sense of being less than.

Walking along the main drag in midtown Toronto was liberating. Talking to shopkeeper after shopkeeper, polishing my pitch as I went from store to store helped me get over my dread of the task, initial shyness and lack of belief that they needed anyone and why should they want me. That very process showed me that I can step outside of my usual role, talk to people who were not my peers, take rejection and keep trying.

In the end I won. There was a clothing store around 5-6 blocks north of my street where the manager said she liked my look and hired me on for part time work. I worked there for the next 2 years and managed to save enough one year to pay for half a year’s worth of my university tuition, back when that was possible. Meant I didn’t have to use student loans for that semester.

The second, more important win was that I learned, deep down in my gut, bones, whole body that problems don’t come without solutions and that effort pays off.

I’m still trying to acquire gut knowledge about the differences between working hard and working smart, and what’s “good enough”. Another time.