Moving Past Deer S**t: A New Chapter

This is not a story. It's more like an article or blog that I wrote this morning about starting to write daily to work towards my aspiration to be a writer full-time.

              “Just start writing” I tell myself.  A few lines about the peaceful solitude of golden summer mornings run through my head as I stare out the two-story window from the computer desk in my bedroom.  They stop-- dead in their tracks-- a mystic creature I am forever hunting, much like the deer my boyfriend hunts.  He is always stepping in fresh s**t, while the beast itself has already advanced further away into the forest.  Never a kill shot.  Forever dirty boots.

I am going to be trapped spinning my wheels forever-- stuck in the hot, sticky mud, and with every tap of the gas pedal, I only sink further.  

“Oh God” I say aloud, with a sudden and heart-stopping sense of dread.  The reverberation of my exclamation creates a scene in my head: my eyes widen, the camera pans away from me slowly, a suspenseful trill resounds as my fate as a failure is unveiled...  My Australian Cattledog, one of four canines in our “wolf pack,” looks up from her place on the floor beside my chair.  Her mouth parts slightly as her deep brown eyes meet mine.  I squint my eyes at her.  She’d better not have anything to say to me today.  Today is not the day for criticism!

Today, Wednesday August 28, is the one week anniversary of the day I got laid off from my job.  Today is a sad day indeed.  A day to reflect.  A day to remember.  A day to dwell on the fruitlessness of the time that has passed since I officially became a bum with no job one week ago today.

I have been working for the last year and a half for a large mortgage company as a home loan processor.  I enjoyed the job well enough.  It was my first mortgage job.  My first “big-girl” job.  It made me feel worth-while finally, after years of waiting tables and taking classes on and off at the community college.  I have learned a lot from my job-- about mortgage, of course, and business in general, and over the course of my employment with the company, I have evolved from a nervous, unapprised kid to a relatively confident professional. 

I have learned so much in just a year and a half.  I can calm a frustrated borrower down to a point at which they thank me and tell me they feel better about their loan transaction after talking to me.  When a branch manager, loan officer, or underwriter asked me to do something, I would carry out the task right away.  I printed my loan pipeline report twice a week and checked in on each of my loans daily.  I’d had top customer service scores on my team of thirty for two months so far this year.  I am able to respond in a calm and professional manner without being discourteous or even passive aggressive (e.g. the many times I received nasty-gram e-mails from [a] crazy loan officer[s]).  I am creative and bold in obtaining resources that can provide invaluable information and assistance.  I have built relationships with loan officers, underwriters, branch managers, escrow agents, and colleagues from different departments and my relationship with these parties are give-and-take-- exceptional teamwork that had enabled us to be more successful as a whole. 

When something was holding one of my loans up, I would go to extremes to get it moving again.  Once I even managed to have a second level project review denial overturned by sending a lengthy e-mail to everyone involved and their mothers arguing for the borrower; it wasn’t his fault the HOA decreased their insurance coverage.  His HO-6 policy carried more than adequate coverage.  This was for a CEMA loan, by the way.  I live in California and had to also battle with an arrogant attorney in New York for the information and title documents I needed.  Here, we go straight to the title company, but New York is an attorney state, as is typical of many states on the East Coast.  What we call an Assessor’s Parcel Number (APN) they call a Borough, Block, and Lot (BBL), and I can’t even begin to elaborate on the trouble this caused.  I swear to you, this attorney literally said to me: “I don’t know what that (the APN) is, and I’m an attorney!”  Exclamation mark and all.  Attorneys are highly-esteemed individuals, superior to paltry home loan processors, and attorneys, in fact, know everything.   

As motivated as I’ve become throughout my growth as a professional, would I have ever gotten the job if it weren’t for my dad?  He was a senior underwriter, highly valued by his superiors and the company, and he had spoken with who he needed to talk to to get me in.  Probably not-- no, I probably would not have gotten the job without him.  I would have turned in my resume-- a short list of restaurants I’d worked at, bullet-points focusing my value on “exemplary customer services skills.”  Without experience in mortgage or even finance, my resume would have been nothing but one second of entertainment as the recruiter wadded it up to shoot a free-throw into the wastebasket.  These days, banking a good job (no pun intended) depends on who you know.

After I was laid off last Wednesday, one of my branch managers (an agreeable man who always knew exactly what was happening with each of the loans in his branch-- a model BM) contacted someone he knew in Business Banking with the same company, and his connection contacted me Monday morning about a job opening.  I spent the day redirecting my resume towards the job description, applied online, and e-mailed both the recruiting officer and the hiring manager.  The job has similarities to my last, but does include vast differences that, in truth, scare me-- sales, more client interaction, more responsibility.  Hopefully my efforts and my referral won’t go unnoticed and I’ll land the job, but if not, I don’t know if I’ll continue a career in finance.

Since I was a kid, I loved to write.  My desktop computer was littered with short stories, poems, “novels,” the occasional article, and A+ essays for school.  When someone asks me what I want to be when I grow up (yes, they still ask), I always respond with “I want to travel the world and write.”  This is my aspiration.  This is what I’ve always wanted to and always wished I could do.

So why haven’t I done it?  Before today, besides the occasional poem or stream-of-consciousness piece, I haven’t written in months.  At least not on paper.  I write in my head all the time.  I formulate sentences, concepts, thoughts, lines, paragraphs even, in my head every single day, but I never touch pen to paper.  Why not?  If I want to be a writer, shouldn’t I be writing?  The first rule of Write Club: DO write. 

I can string words together in my head and I can originate new topics to write about, but, like the lines about summer mornings, what is beyond those few sentences I stir up during my commute or the concept that reveals itself in the grocery store-- the actual product-- the book, the short story, the article-- is lost in the forest of my consciousness like the deer my boyfriend never brings home (sorry, Honey).

This summer has been an eventful summer for me.  Besides getting laid off, I experienced a distressing death in the family, and six days later on June 12, a house fire while my boyfriend and I were asleep in bed with our four dogs (not Chihuahuas or Pomeranians either; two labs, a cattle dog, and a husky mix that we had to pull out of the window while our roof was on fire.  Yes-- our roof was on fire while we slept, and yes-- I did sing “The Roof is on Fire” while the firemen drowned our house in H2O.  I know-- I’m mature).  Our normal summer of camping, fishing, BBQs, and country concerts was interrupted by life. 

S**t happens.

When a big event happens in my life, such as a death (both physical and metaphorical), a move (from hotel to rental home and, hopefully sooner rather than later, back to our home that burned down, which will be rebuilt once our insurance company stops dragging their feet), or a job change (glad to have been of service), I try to maintain a positive outlook.  When one life chapter ends, another begins, and in the end, things will have panned out to form one hell of a story.

So what am I doing with my latest big event-- being laid off?  I’m going to take this time to work towards doing what I want to do with my life.  I want to be a writer.  So today, on the one-week anniversary of my lay-off, I write.  I actually, physically write, instead of stewing thoughts and words in the Crock Pot of my mind.  Another chapter has come to an end, but my book is thick.  My book is War and Peace, Les Miserable, and Moby Dick combined into one heavy a*s book that could knock someone out indefinitely if thrown at their head during an argument (sorry again, Honey).

Despite all the hiccups life spews your way, it is never a bad time nor can you be too far down the road to work on making yourself a happier, healthier person.  My job, rewarding and enlightening as it was, was not my bliss.  Writing is my bliss, and today is as good a day as any to start doing what I want to do.  I have an old soul with many stories to tell.  I am on to the next chapter, and this chapter, I will be writing myself.

Today, I am putting my foot down.  If I have to keep stepping in deer s**t, I might as well bring home a deer.

    

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Once I get some help setting up a website, I want to start publishing blogs a few days a week. I would appreciate any feedback on writing style, word choice, world flow, content. Are there any parts that don't make sense to you? Did you overall find this entertaining? Did I lose you anywhere? Did this flow together? Thanks for all your help! :)

Reviews

[Jessica Leslie]

Also-- title. It was last-minute. I am terrible at naming what I write. Any ideas? Any titling processes to share?

Thanks again!