The funny thing about life, or my life in particular, is
that when it comes to the really big decisions, the ones that actually matter
and will drastically alter the course of your future, I have yet to be faced with an
easy one. Luckily, my choice this time around was between something awesome and something
fantastic. Not so luckily, I am TERRIBLE at making decisions.
It was a chilly afternoon in late September. As I paced back
and forth in front of the office of my current job anxiously awaiting the
interviewer’s call from what I was hoping would be my next job, I could not
help but wonder – is this it? Am I finally doing what so many have inquired (on
an annoyingly regular basis) about? Am I finally growing up and settling down? Am I finally getting a real job?
In a daze, I nodded and uhum-ed as the woman on the other
end described the job to me. An international translational service company
which boasts quite the resume (they translate for the FBI, Honda and even McDonalds!), a pretty
paycheck, a beautiful office on Park Avenue, and did I mention offices around
the globe with a lot of opportunity for international travel? …what more could
a girl who lives and breathes traveling and languages want, right?
Perhaps, but that girl would have to be sane and rational, which I tend not to be about 95% of the time. So, when I heard,
“Congratulations Aliona, we would like to offer you the position, do you
accept?” for some ungodly reason I asked for twenty four hours to think it over.
Twenty four hours. How much can really change in twenty four
hours? For everyone else in the world they would go home, have dinner, head to
bed, wake up the next morning and chew the decision over with some cereal for breakfast. They would then call back their recruiter
and tell them they can’t wait to start. But that's just everyone else. For me, my entire life was changed in
those few short hours.
As my phone vibrated the next morning to notify me of an
e-mail, I could not help but get angry that I forgot to deactivate my Groupon
e-mails (10 e-mails a day, really?) This one, however, was not from Groupon –
it was from AmeriCorps NCCC, congratulating me on my acceptance to serve in two
weeks.
My entire
world was flipped upside down. My future consisting of a fancy NYC office
and an apartment in Brooklyn withered away to nothing in a matter of hours.
Very long, painful hours as I processed my current predicament, weighing each
miniscule detail of my options. As much fun as growing up and settling down
sounded, I could not get Mark Twain’s words out of my head:
“Twenty years from now you will be more
disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So
throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds
in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
An
office job in NYC is not going anywhere, but my youth is. Growing up,
getting a “real” job and settling down can hold off for another year, but
AmeriCorps cannot. Lastly, I have the rest of my life to make money, so why not
volunteer and give back for a few months?
What came to me disguised as the most difficult decision of
my life was really just a simple choice of following my heart and doing what I
am passionate about. Needless to say that the doing the program alongside my best friend Melissa, who got accepted into the Sacramento program, was more than anything I could have asked for.
And so they began, my ten months of service in Class XIX of AmeriCorps
National Civilian Community Corps, Southwest Region.
