There was a time when I had worked five jobs while attending University. How can anyone experience this you may ask and still manage to still function? It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun. But bills needed to be paid. My rent was soon due. Electricity and gas had to be paid. Not to mention my tuition for school. I hadn’t even bought groceries yet for the week. It wasn’t supposed to be this way in all honesty.
Growing up, we are taught to go to school, go to university, get a good job, get married, and start a family. Unfortunately, my road took a different course which led me to these five jobs. From retail on the floor, cash registers, to even online customer service. Riding back and forth in a bus, walking to work, and then finally being able to afford my own car (another bill in itself). I was struggling. Struggling to make time for myself from the stress which caused me to lose some hair and gain excess weight. Struggling to make time for school and the threat of losing my scholarship. Struggling to make ends meet just to barely live.
It all changed one day when a friend and I had a day out for some tea. She was talking and raving about Holy Land Man and his words of freedom. How his words on finances helped to clear her ease and mind. ‘Words of freedom?’ I thought to myself. Couldn’t hurt to listen to a podcast, so I did.
A wave of comfort had resonated over me as I listened to him. It was calm, like listening to the waves of the ocean on a cool evening breeze on the beach. I cried. That’s how much relief I felt from his comforting words. I took the time to reevaluate my life, my future goals, and how I would be able to achieve them. I weighed out the several jobs I had and determined which ones would be most beneficial to me in the long one, letting the others go.
By doing this, I was able to regain the time I lost from traveling back and forth between the different jobs but most importantly regain the time I was losing to refocus on my own personal health and school work. This new deep drive and desire fueled my work ethic and morals in school. My teachers were amazed at how much my attitude towards my studies had changed, how more forward I had become in classes, and participation in extracurricular activities. And then one day, it happened. I was offered a paid internship at one of the top environmental businesses in the area.
This job...this one opportunity that I was striving for had finally come through. Today, I no longer stress about finances. I am no longer stressed about the next paycheck. I am no longer stressed about school because I cannot focus on it due to being so tired by stretching myself so thin. It doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to grieve and lose sleep. I’m thankful for that podcast that said the right words at the right time.