I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, starting a new job is like walking in mid-conversation without any idea of what is going on. Turn’s out this new job feels a lot like walking in mid-conversation and finding out that everyone is talking in another language.

I’ve only been here four days, which accounts to me still being a baby and still being able to get away with knowing very, very little. It’s too bad that I am so much harder on myself than anyone else is planning to be because I’m already disappointed I didn’t learn everything there was to know after the first day. Apparently, I’ve got to work on this.

I’ve learned a little more than a little bit though. I’ve kept up with what I could and more importantly I do believe that I’ve done the best that I possibly can. For the moments I forget this though, I lean back in my chair and I stare at the computer monitor belonging to the girl sitting next to me.

I barely know her. Judging by the sticky notes hanging off of her computer screen, and the fact that she’s the graphic designer, I’m pretty confident that she’s pretty great at what she does. But on the corner of her computer screen is one sticky note in particular that I am often lead to read. It says this:

I accept myself unconditionally right now.

After reading it several times, I told her I was a fan of it. And as if knowing, she said, have you said it out loud yet? It helps.

So I’m going to say it out loud from now on. Probably every day. Probably more than once every day. Because I think I need to. Because I think that every word in that sentence counts – it means something – and the sentence would mean much less without each and every word. The right now part, I mean that’s for every time I want to say that I accept myself unconditionally, just at a later date. Which is often how I feel. That I’m alright and all, but I’ll like myself more further down the road.

There are a million and one things going very, very right in my life at the moment. And I am grateful. While not as often as I should, I thank God for all of them. And I am, truly, deeply thankful. I’m thankful for this new job even when I’m nervous. I’m thankful for my cute and cozy home, for my friends – even the one’s who are far away – especially the one’s who are far away, for my boyfriend, and for the encouragement I can feel from my family all the way back in Ontario. I’m thankful for the way the past many months have come together despite my relentless ability to worry that they never will. They did. They still are.

And I am trying, so desperately, to live life with my arms wide open. I would really, really like to be the person who lives that way. But lately I have my fists clenched, or my palms sweaty, and I’m too busy trying to hold it together that I forget to let go.

Lately, there’s been a disconnect between the way things are and how I feel. Like when I’m managing everything just fine but I feel like I can’t manage any of it at all. I’m trying to figure out how to fill in that gap. How to pull two very separate pieces somehow together. But more than anything I suppose, I’m learning how to say just this:

I accept myself unconditionally right now.