The LOOOONG Beginning

So you’re probably wondering how someone just gets up one day and decides to be, what my friend so lovingly refer to as a “sky waitress”. Well this is a far more complicated and hopefully somewhat what more interesting explanation that you’re expecting but here goes. I suppose it all started when I was taking a marketing capstone course called….well I can’t remember what it was call but that’s not important. What is important is that for our first and pretty much only assignment we had to write a giant paper about ourselves, what industry’s we might like to get into, and all our findings about said industries and the jobs there after. We were to begin by creating a large list of what made us happy in life and this, as my teacher explained would inevitably and easily depict what we are supposed to do with our lives. Well I found this task daunting to say the least. I’d like to think everyone struggles with who they are and what they want out of life but it seems I had a particularly hard time with it. What took some people minuets to complete took me days. My list eventually ended up with consisting of things like: friends, travel, helping people, learning about different cultures, children, adventure, and shoes (we all have to have our minor indulgences). After viewing this list I thought to myself this says nothing to me about what I should do; in fact, I felt more lost having completed the list than when I began it. So it was then and there that I decided that instead of chasing this life of stability and sensibility that I had planning for so long, I would do something radical. I would attempt to do something that makes me…wait for it….. happy. I know I know crazy right. Now I can’t say that this is entirely where I’m sitting right now but at least I’m taking a chance and experience life and that far more than I can say I have ever done. Well so there I was looking at this list and I trying to decipher what I should do when it came to me, I should try being a flight attendant. It fits many of the criteria so why not. Now how the heck do you get into that, I had no idea. I just did what any twenty first century young person would do, I goggled it. Sure enough there was a job posting for Flight Attendant in the twin cities for a regional airline. I thought it must have been fate. So just like that I interviewed and got accepted. Now you would think that this is where the story would end. And I know your thinking, now come on that was kind of lame. But OOOOHHH no the story has just begun my friends. That was, believe it or not, over a year prior to me starting my job with yes the same airlines.

You see I was naive enough to think starting a career went in some sort of sequential order. Step one: interview for a job, step two: get the job, and finally step three: start working said job. Apparently, I was tragically mistaken. After I was hired they were going through a secret bankruptcy and then a merger so they continually kept pushing off my training date and I like a hopeful and semi desperate newb kept waiting. I moved home, the one thing I told myself I wouldn’t do, (love you mom and dad) and started working at the daycare next to my house for next to nothing. After the third time training was pushed back I get a call telling me that, for reasons they can not disclose, they have decided to cancel training new people. They lovingly stated that, “your offer has not been rescinded but you are not being hired at this time.” WHAT!!!! Soo after crying about it like a lost child I decided the next step was to move out and get a clue. I packed my worldly belonging in the back of my late great beloved blazer and moved to the cities. With a little help and some called in favors I got a job with a rental car company which I’m sure would like to remain nameless. Needless to say I HATED it! For seven months or so I forcibly worked over 50 hours a week selling useless coverage on rental cars in whatever the Minnesota weather wanted to throw at me. After catching H1N1 and being too depressed and stressed to enjoy the little time I had left in my day I decided I needed a big change. My next move started with a random rant about wanting to go live in Copenhagen where the happiest people on earth live (well Denmark in general but look it up its super cool).

I wanted to change every aspect of my life. I had finally, after years of planning, perfectionism, and stressing over every little thing, decided that life was way too short to be unhappy. No I did not move to Copenhagen but I did get somewhat close. I posted my profile on a great website called au pair world and with no expectations at all calmed my restless sprit with the possibilities of life overseas. Surprisingly, I did get responses. I found a wonderful family in England, a place I have always had a special affinity for, wanted me! They were wonderful and quite affluent which couldn’t hurt. We talked back and forth and after many hash out sessions I was ready to hop a plane and go. I sold my now dying car, subleased my apartment, packed all my things, and said goodbye to the world I knew. I got all the way there when I was stopped at the border with what I would later find out was a judgment call that there are no written rules for. After a traumatic experience in holding I was reluctantly sent home. It’s a long story in itself so and I don’t really want to get into the details but needless to say it sucked. So I found myself once again without direction and completely hopeless. Not a week later do I get a call from the airlines saying they would like to know if I was still interested in a job. Now this was either one of life’s cruel jokes or the long lost window to my many shut doors. After one more push back of training I was able to take the job at last and here I am…oh wait not yet I had to survive training which we will get to next. Am I boring you yet?

*I swear after the next section it’s will get far more entertaining, at least that’s the intention