Learning is an Adventure

"We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong." ~Bill Vaughn, American columnist and author

The honeymoon is over as they say. New jobs, like new relationships, can be heady, exciting adventures at the start, especially for extroverted, sanguine personalities like mine. We love learning new things and getting to meet new people. I also enjoy learning new processes and systems in an organization, and like taking chaotic, messy processes and and creating ways for them to be clear and usable. I haven't always been able to articulate or even recognize that I enjoy these things. Getting to know yourself is one of the benefits of having a few extra years as a grown up.

Jumping into the inner workings of a large church has been full of these types of adventures. I also enjoy the unpredictable and never-know-what-you'll-be asked-to-do next atmosphere of the artistic area I work in. I might be off to purchase a bunch of items one day (like a bunch of yoga balls), participating in a creative planning meeting the next, and doing research online another day. I love the craziness of it.

But, (did you sense that coming?) it's not easy. It is hard to be thrown into a fast pace Christmas-planning-crazy environment where you are trying to keep up the pace, when you don't quite have your feet under you. Feeling like you are trying to learn the phone and computer systems, decipher workplace slang (what's a M.O.S.? a Crunch?), and simply learn people's names is a challenge. And there is always the need to just "learn" people. Body language and tone can tell you far more than words, but it takes time to be able to pick up on the individual dialects. Like taking residence in a foreign culture, there comes a point where the awe of observing and absorbing new sights and sounds starts to wear on you and you miss the familiar and routine of your homeland.

Last week I had a bad day. I misread some of the lingo and I let myself get overwhelmed by the language barrier. I got stressed out trying to keep up and look like I was a native when still need the map now and then! It's good to be reminded that I am not always going to get it the first time, and that the natives are pretty patient here. I'm learning something new every day and trying to embrace it as an adventure. Which is a good way to live life, not just work, I'm thinking.