Not Qualified? No Problem: On-the-Job Training is Provided

I sat in my tiny cubicle and blinked.

The computer screen flickered in front of me and I felt like a trapped mouse.

What was I doing here?

My first “real” job where someone thought I was decent enough to get paid for my skills. Like, a salary, a 401K and the whole nine yards.

I felt completely overwhelmed, unworthy and (since I had never sat in a cubicle for any length of time) like I wanted to bolt straight for the door.

The previous nine months were hard. I had graduated from college. And while I loved my program and university, the second I got out I realized that I hadn’t really been prepared for the job market. Little to no real-world experience.

My degree was in graphic design and we focused mostly on print. At the time, high speed internet was just starting to take off and the need for web designers was huge.

I had looked for jobs in the print industry with no success. Everyone wanted someone who had ten years of experience and the competition was extremely tight.

Through friends of friends, I heard of a couple different startup companies who were looking for web designers as “interns” (code word for: “We’ll pay you in beans”). Heck, I was there to learn… pay was secondary. I was living with my parents and they had graciously let me park there until I figured out a direction.

I took a retail job on the side to preserve my dignity and build up equity.

I knew next to NOTHING when I started doing web design for these startups. I’d show up at 5PM AFTER my day job and work from 5 to whenever. My “boss” would tell me what he wanted the site to do and how he wanted it to work and I would take my big fat question marks to a search engine and learn all there was to know about coding and design as it pertained to the web.

After a few months of this, another friend called saying he had a legit startup (with tons of venture-capital money) and they wanted to hire their first web designer.

And that was how I ended up in a cubicle… with only enough on-the-job training to be passable, at best. I was scared, nervous…. but incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

Momming isn’t much different. We all arrive there on different trains. Some of us chose it from when we were little girls. Some of us were surprised. Some of us waited an eternity for it to happen.

But there we are. Sitting in the hospital room (or at home, or the back of a cab, or wherever you gave birth), blinking against the light as we look at that little squirming bundle and think “How did I get here? I am totally unqualified for this.”

There are quite a few things in this life that we simply have to go through ourselves in order to learn and grow. The school-of-hard knocks or whatever you want to call it.

Just know, while you go through those things as a mom, the God who MADE both you and your little baby is with you and cheering for your successes AND failures.

AND- he doesn’t want you to do it alone. I am called to be an encourager… and on top of that, an encourager who makes you laugh.

Because lightening the load looks like seeing the absurdity in every situation and having a good chuckle while you clean up the poo that just got sprayed 6 feet across the room.

I want more moms to spend more time gaining perspective and not taking life so seriously. I want you to see the potential in your children (yes, even your tiny children) to take responsibility for things in their sphere of influence. I want you to “work yourself out of a job.”

My hope and prayer is that I can give you a chuckle about the absurdity and irony of things that go on in my world; and that you can use that as motivation to take another step that day. Tackle one more screaming child.

Get dinner on the table. Kiss another boo boo.

Because momming is way harder than web design.

It is a job, but it is also a life’s calling.

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