The Anatomy of a Kill...or Once in a Blue Moon
You know how preparedness is the key to success? Patience pays off?
Time teaches many things and patience is just one of those lessons?
Hehe, well I’ve been paying attention.
Sure, it’s been a long hard slog back up from the hole I fell into in 2007.
It was an Initiatory experience, of epic proportions from my perspective.
I don’t expect very many people to truly understand what I mean, but there are a few that will.
My apologies for the formatting, I continue to struggle with whatever makes my entries misallign.
One of the things time teaches you is how to be grateful. When you have to wait, when you have to struggle ,sometimes just to eat, let alone to have the bills paid and gas to get to work to make the little bit of money you do get for your time, you learn to appreciate so many things because they stand out from all the shit you’re going through. You learn to appreciate the little things. You learn to appreciate the things that most people, if they are honest, never take the time to notice. It’s not that they don’t HAVE the time, it’s that they don’t TAKE the time. In this case, time offered me a great big Cosmic Clue By Four…you might say the Ace of Two-by-Fours…about how waiting pays off. Not just jumping at the first little gnat that shakes the web because you’re desperate and you’re hungry for change. It teaches you to see things in longer range, in a range long enough to see the eventual pay off, and why jumping at the first gnat will cause you to miss the big catch…that grasshopper you’ve been waiting for.
Yeah, if you detect the spider’s perspective here, it’s because Spider has been my teacher since 2007. They appeared in my garden first, in August of 2007. The big beautiful golden orb weavers…the writing spiders. Aside from the beauty of their webs, the marvel of symmetry and delicate balance, their webs feed them. Their webs are strong, they are, in most cases more resilient than you think.
Well Spider had a thing or two to teach me. Once the one in the garden disappeared, one appeared next to the doorway of the house I was living in. It just happened to coincide with the loan of a spinning wheel. Having just learned to knit, a friend put a drop spindle in my hands at one of the knitting get togethers and I was immediately entranced. It was like I’d done it before…well once I’d switched from a bottom whirl to a top whirl, that is. Turns out the bottom whirl is actually the older of the two. My father’s mother’s maiden name was Lain…taken from McLaine…French Scots ..and guess what Laine is in French? Hehe…wool. Are you seeing a pattern here? Spiders, spinning, Laine, wool? Okay.
So spiders have since been the indicator to me of ‘spinning season’ It’s when it’s time to get the wheel out and oiled up and start searching for roving. That’s the stuff you spin into yarn, for those of you that don’t know. But lately, since we’ve moved into this house, I’ve had no garden for the spiders to come to. Nevertheless this beauty found it’s way to my front door.
Isn’t she gorgeous? And I’ve been watching her. There have been any number of smaller bugs caught in the edges of her web and she has not eaten them, and in one case I observed her RELEASING them. WTF? Since when do hungry spiders let their prey go? This particular spider appears to be more than the sum of her parts…so I have continued watching…she spins her web every evening, and sits and waits. Every day this perfect web, snaring little bugs at its edges but never anything of substance. I still watch, fascinated as she trims threads and releases the ones that are able to get away with her help. It was puzzling to me. Then I realized, not only was she smart, she knew what she was looking for. That once in a lifetime chance for the BIG KILL. I too have been waiting, declining offers that would only sap my strength and time and leave me unable to take advantage of the possibility of something better.
And then, at the perfect time, the goal is within reach. The reason for her patience tucked amid the leaves of the jasmine vines that twine up both sides of my front porch.
Jasmine vines? You say? Yes, Aset in Her many guises has been my Matron for nearly 30 years…I grow jasmine as and when I can because they are her most beloved offering. The spider has entrusted her legacy within it’s leaves. This then, is the reason why she has conserved her strength, why she didn’t pounce on every opportunity, descending on tiny morsels that did not put back more than the effort in capture cost her.
And yesterday, as the Blue Moon in Pisces waxed and became full at 9:57am, a recruiter was perusing my resume on Career Builders. At 10:34am, my phone rings. I am at work, so I walk outside to speak with her about an opportunity that comes ONCE in a BLUE MOON. A position that is even better than the one I left at the bank more than twelve years ago. I didn’t want to leave that job, I had to. It was sucking the life out of me at a time when my family needed me. Something had to give. I have always been sort of at the mercy of things happening in other people’s lives that affect mine. “Like the pebble dragged along,” is an apt way of putting it. My mother had cancer, my daughter was pregnant at 15 and my marriage was going south in a hurry in 1998. Little did I know how long it would be before I would regain my momentum and be able to have a career worthy position to devote the rest of my life towards. I wanted a life….and I got it, but it cost me dearly…it cost me the ability to make my own living for more than a dozen years. Until yesterday.
Like the spider, I was hungry for an opportunity. Like the spider, there were others that presented themselves but none really worth the energy expended on them for what they would provide in benefit. Too little pay for too long hours, no health benefits, no paid vacation, it seemed I was doomed.
But that all changed when this recruiter found MY resume out of hundreds on that website. And out of hundreds of employers, she was searching on behalf of one that thinks like I do. A man who looks at the backstory. Himself a two time cancer survivor and single father. Small details in my resume led him to choose me. I could not meet until 6pm. He told the recruiter he would wait for me. That’s no small thing considering he was getting ready to leave for Europe with his family for two weeks. He waited. He waited for me. Like me waiting for the opportunity and the spider for hers. We all waited. And while that Blue Moon waxed gibbous in the morning light, pieces of a puzzle waiting twelve years fell into place. After that interview, after he told me the job was mine, told me he'd see me in two weeks, I went out to my car and literally fell into a million pieces in the parking lot. Looking at that building through my tears of joy, rainbows from the setting sun glittered in my vision. This is my diamond, my pot of gold, my new path, my new beginning. This is fruition.
Maybe I’m being dramatic. But what this means to me, at this time, at this place in my life when I had all but lost hope…that ‘once in a blue moon’ happened. She got her grasshopper, I got the job of a lifetime, that recruiter nailed a huge commission and that employer picked the right employee to suit his vision. Once in a Blue Moon…indeed.
I can’t stop walking around with this silly, goofy grin all over my face. And to think, Spider taught me the lesson in patience that has paid off. Now, maybe I’m hyping it up more than I should so that the reality will never live up to the expectation. But all I really expect, is the opportunity. Give me the job and tools and I’ll reach the goal. All I need is the opportunity. All that spider needed, was the opportunity, the right opportunity. All that recruiter needed was the right resume, and that employer needed the right fit. Our collective patience has paid off. And my Loom of Life has been fed by the Web of Wyrd and I am, will be, the richer for it.
Here’s hoping all of you who need the opportunity have it, and the patience and perseverance to seize that opportunity and make the most of it. I wish for you the happiness, the utter and complete joy of knowing you are where you are supposed to be to take advantage of the right opportunity. Poised to make your kill at that once in a blue moon chance that will change your life, for the better, forever.
Wait for it…wait. For. It. And like the spider, like me, seize that opportunity and wring every last drop of possibility out of it. Be ready, be patient and be choosy. And the grasshopper? What does he get out of this? Another chance, a new beginning...and maybe, just maybe, he'll get to be the spider next time.