When you visit the Hollywood Transit Center in Portland, Oregon via light rail (MAX) or bus, you’ll come across this wonderful mural. I don’t know for sure if this is the same sentence repeated in different languages throughout the mural, but in English the quote is, “Why would a flower hesitate to open?” I took this picture because the quote was a reminder to me how circumstances in life can hold you back from achieving your goals. In nature a flower might not open because it has died or the weather has made it harder for it to bloom. Likewise, in my own life, I’ve found two examples in which it’s been hard to flourish.
The first example relates directly to writing. For a long time, I found it hard to write was because I didn’t completely believe in my own voice. I grew up with an extremely rare neurological disorder called Moebius syndrome which affects the sixth and seventh cranial nerves that control facial and eye movement. This condition left me with a bilateral facial paralysis and was also responsible for what I lovingly refer to as the speech impediment from Hell. I was routinely bullied, teased, condescended to, or underestimated because of my disabilities. In other words, how can you find your voice if no one wants to hear it?
Even though I knew from the age of four that I wanted to be a writer, too many times I’d hear people saying, essentially, that I wasn’t good enough. By internalizing that behavior, it’s no wonder that my writing faltered, even though the desire to write remained constant. During the years that I didn’t write at all, that desire to write became a constant pressure in my stomach that felt like a scream waiting to be released. When I did write, it was in fits and starts, and it was only recently through a friend asking me to create a column for our local Toastmasters magazine that I finally began to focus on my dream of becoming a writer in earnest.
The second example came as a bit of a shock on multiple levels. After many months of pandemic-related worry about where I’d find a job, an opportunity came knocking. I’d signed up with a temp agency, and to my surprise, they notified me about a chance to work for the City of Portland. I would be employed in a department focused on maintaining contracts for the city. This was an area of expertise I’d never even considered and had absolutely no experience in. I nearly said no, then took a step back and thought about the implications of this invitation. If I took the job, there was the possibility of my employment becoming permanent and gaining excellent benefits with the city. I said yes, went to the job interview, and landed the job.
I lasted two months on the job. Despite the fact that I was told that I would be on a year-long contract, I was let go two weeks ago on my first day of staycation. The explanation given to the temp agency was that I hadn’t met the technical standards of the job, even though I’d been open during the job interview about wanting to expand my computer skills as well as take whatever classes were offered in order to better learn how to create and maintain contracts with the city. I was justifiably devastated.
Then I took a look back at the job, and I wondered whether I’d dodged a bullet. As I’d mentioned above, I had no experience with contracts and found learning some of the material extremely challenging. Worse, I had started to eat junk food to stave off some of the nervousness and stress I was having on the job. But perhaps the thing that bothered me the most was the intermittent amount of training I received. I’d arrived near the end of the fiscal year which meant that many last-minute projects needed to be completed, meaning that our training opportunities were limited. Not long after that, people started taking vacations, including our supervisors, which meant even less time learning what I needed to know for my job. I would train myself on a number of subjects as a result, including becoming more educated on the basics of Adobe Acrobat and Excel, but I wouldn’t have that many more training sessions before I was let go. Talk about a flower hesitating to open. What happens if you’re the person who’s not getting the support you need in order to thrive at your workplace?
In summary, this quote was a reminder of my own feelings of inadequacy, but it also illustrates the need to grow even under the most adverse of conditions. As of today, I’m working on my blog on a regular basis and will start to monetize it shortly. I know that it won’t be an overnight success; in fact, most blogs can take over a year to make money at all. Nonetheless, the goal is for me to make writing my primary career. If I need to take other work to make ends meet, I have no problem with that. However, I will be much more open about my needs in the future regarding receiving training and growth opportunities. My assertiveness matters because I matter, and if I want to be of greater benefit to someone else’s company, let alone my own, I need to allow myself as many opportunities to grow as possible. If I can bloom and thrive, perhaps I can help others do the same.
Freedman on the Go 