Transitions

Well, I've apparently done it! I've made the transition from university student to university employee.

While some of  UWT's "systems" still aren't entirely convinced of my non-student status, and my position is still missing from my name in the campus directory, I just completed my first week on what my husband likes to call my first "grown-up job." (Which is totally not true, by the way, but he thinks it's funny!)

Aside from a few hiccups--like taking days to get office keys, and the inability to create a shared id for one of my divisions because that system insists I am "still a student," in spite of my December 2014 graduation--it's been a great first week!

But transitions always bring challenges, don't they? It's just the nature of the beast.

Liz, the main character in my novel, is a woman in transition--but she doesn't want to be. She's being forced to come to terms with the fact that she can't hold on to her past and still live the life she wants to live. She has to let go of the way things used to be, and move on. And that frightens her.

Much more than I did when I started writing the novel, I understand that now.

I realized the other day that all of the emotional and mental upheaval I felt last fall--trying to figure out my next step after finishing my degree--was exactly what Liz was feeling. It's so much easier to cling to the familiar and to want to hold onto it even when it's taken from you (in her case, through her husband's death; in mine, through graduating)--but for all of us, the time will come when we simply have to let go of the past or we can never really live the life we have.

We have to make that transition--to grown-up jobs. To letting go of the past.

But we don't have to have it all figured out in advance. We just have to be willing to take a step--a first step. That first step isn't necessarily a forever commitment, but it gets you moving in the direction you want to go. And that's the important thing--you've been willing to move.

The truly amazing thing about this "insight" is that I can now take it back to my novel and give it to Liz.

I can't wait to see what she'll do with it!