10 Positives to Every Negative

I once heard it said that it takes 10 positive comments to undo one negative comment. And maybe that's true. It's something that I beginning to believe. For those of you who've known me for a while know that I worked in a pretty bad place a couple years ago. There was a lot of stuff with management there that just really damaged my self-esteem when it comes to work - one of the managers went as far as to call me stupid for not picking up my pay check once... But now, I'm happy. I work behind a bowl desk and I'm happy. It's funny how bad the last place I worked at messed me up, but where I'm at now, the management is just awesome and seem to like me. I'm flourishing here. I'm happy here.

I realized the other day that I've been employed here for over a month now and not once have I thought about quitting. The last place I was at, well, at the end of day one I had made the decision to give it a month and if it still sucked, I planned on quitting. The title of the journal comes from this: my managers at this place believe in me. My direct manager has twice said something nice to me that has just been... encouraging. I get it in my mind that I screw up every shift and it makes me wonder if I'm really cut out for this job, but during the first weekend we were opened, my manager thanked me for being me. That placed me in a good mind set. Than, last night, as we were running my employee balance he told me that I "would always be one of the strongest" meaning he thought I'm handling this position well.

I'm in a good mindset right now. I love where I'm working. I'm happy. I didn't realize how happy I could be working behind a bowling counter. I really didn't. I remember when I walked into the on-site trailer to turn in my application and thinking "dang dude! I really don't want to work here!" I mean, I graduated less than a year ago and I hoped I would have a job that my degree would go toward, but now... I honestly wouldn't mind being here until my writing career becomes more than just stuff on my hard drive. It's a good place. I'm blown away by how awesome management is and I honestly think the world be a better place if more businesses handled management the way they do where I'm at.

My self-esteem is still messed up from the last place I worked at, but I feel like I'm growing in this place and I feel like I'm going to continue to do well (though, I'm still nervous about my performance review that's coming up at some point soon...). I'm happy here and it's been a much better month than the last few months have been. I feel like life is finally starting to shape up.

I remember this time last year. It was just before my birthday and I had a little bit of a quarter life crisis, I guess you could say. I felt like I had none of my shit together. Now, I'm not sure if it's a case of I feel like I'm getting my shit together now or maybe I just don't care if I ever get it together or not, but I'm really looking forwarding to turning 24 on Sunday. I'm living up to the nickname one of my co-workers gave me. I'm feeling like Sunshine again. And it's absolutely wonderful.