I think my job changed me as a person.
Or maybe it's just the passing time that's molded me into the person I have become.
I can't help but wonder if certain things in my life didn't happen the way they did, if I would be different and better than I am today. I feel that I am often finding I don't like the person I see and when I come to these realizations I try to change that. I've grown another year older and I have come to the conclusion that I'll probably never be satisfied with the person I am simply because that is the type of person I am. Does that even make sense? I don't know but I'm going with it.
Back to my job- I work in a pharmacy and I've done quite well for myself financially speaking (from where I have started to where I am now that it is). I have worked there for three years and have noticed qualities about myself that are no longer alive in me. I used to be extremely outgoing and social. Now I am more of an anti-social hermit. If I met me three years ago in the grocery store, younger me would've struck up a conversation with just about anyone. Fast forward to today and I avoid any interactions with other people at all costs as if they were the plague.
I've seen the worst in people. The negativity is daunting and heavy in my work place. It is a daily norm to get yelled at and it just about expected that more than half of exchanges with customers are going to be sour ones. I know to an extent that my own attitude is half the battle, but I've worked in an environment that has bred me to be this way, bracing for the impact everyday. I consistently try to alter the negativity with positivity, but so often it is unsuccessful. It feels the more I am defeated, the less I want to stand up and fight and as a result, I fall to the level of the rotten public.
My job has changed me as a person.
I am more than understanding that in a pharmacy I am working with medicine and therefore sick people, but you would have to work a day in my shoes to truly understand the abuse that we put up with working in the retail setting of medicine. People have learned to complain about everything and be nasty to get what they want. The world has become so bitter and misery truly does love company. I often encounter people who I truly believe have nothing better to do but go places and cause scenes. Sometimes it seems there are people who receive true enjoyment in putting other people down. A bad mood is like a disease and it spreads like cancer from one person to the next. A dangerous ripple effect. It is so much easier to allow yourself to be in a poor mood than it is to lift yourself out of that abyss. I know this because it is a daily struggle of mine.
It makes me extremely sad to think about the hopeful person I once was, and the bitter person I now am when I look at the world and the people that inhabit it. However, it is so important to remember that everyone isn't like this. It may seem like there is no good left but sometimes that because your too focused on the bad to even notice it. I don't want to be this person in the darkness, unhappy to go to my job everyday. It's no way to go through life.
I won't give up. I will continue to try and be the change I wish to see in the world. It may feel like you can't make a difference, but even the smallest of actions can make the biggest impacts in someone else's day. It is not hard to be kind. It is actually relatively easy and mutually beneficial at that. It's too bad that there are so many people out there just like me, who don't have the desire to be better and change themselves. They have let themselves rot to the core and they are truly missing out on the beauty that life has to offer.
My job has changed me as a person, but I am no longer going to let it have that control over me. The truth of the matter is that it never really had control over me in the first place. I just allowed myself to believe that to justify the shell of a person I have become. I chose the pharmacy because it gave me the ability to help people and make a difference. I am going to punch in everyday with a goal to make an exceptional difference in at least one persons life for the better. Every day. One person at a time. And maybe together we can kill the cancer and may the kindness ripple into the lives of many.
I will never stop trying to be the very best version of myself. Life is a journey of living and learning. What kind of life is it to do the same things over and over and expect it to deliver you different results? It isn't a life it all; it is the definition of insanity.
So what, my job changed me. Many things in my life have altered my path and made me the person I am today. I am happy to have this obstacle to overcome and grow from. Whatever it is that has changed YOU, you have the power to grow upward from too.
