The joyful job search

I've been thinking about this job search of mine - and although it's really only been 5 weeks since I graduated, and three weeks of full-time job searching, I feel very positive about it. I am going to try to keep this feeling as long as possible-- as long as it takes. (I started writing this post a week and a half ago, and feel it bottled up inside me!)

Yeah, I'm unemployed with lots of debt. But actually, this job search is the luckiest situation I've ever gotten myself into. I have literally been working to get to this point since I was in high school and decided I wanted to do something about climate change for my career. And now I'm actually allowed and permitted and qualified to go searching for that one place that is just right for me. I believe I can find a job making our biggest problems less bad, and there are many job postings, not stars, in my eyes. Being able to go after what you want is a blessing.

How can a job search be joyful?

• Reiterating my qualifications in endless permutations is actually a positive experience. In the process I become extremely convinced of my suitability for the particular position. It feels good. The job search is joyful because the marketer in me comes out and has fun selling the product.
  
• This positivity is ego-boosting because upon reflection I think that my situation is a result of choices and resolutions that I made. I am well-qualified for the jobs I actually want; I have a well-rounded skill set, and this is thanks to my own decisions. I passed the exam for a technical position (that I now have an interview for)-- because the only Master's program I considered taking was the one that was half science. I knew it would be necessary. I was thinking ahead. The job search is joyful because it is intrinsically validating.
  
• I am constantly thinking about the opportunities that other people gave to me. My dad had worked with someone at New America, so I got an interview. My mentors and colleagues at New America handed me golden opportunity after golden opportunity-- to write, research, give presentations, manage projects...The list stretches all the way back, and I could never thank everyone who helped me (and they are still going to bat for me) enough. So the job search is joyful because it makes me feel gratitude.

The most joyful part about this search will of course be the end of it. Because:

1. I'm not always able to stay so positive-- uncertainty and financial insecurity is fuel for fears at those moments when I'm alone in my car, burning CO2, or awake at night, or checking my balances, and 
2. The selection of temptations at Urban Outfitters is truly heartbreaking in the summertime.

Lo mejor está por venir.