I have always disliked change and disruption in my life because of the uncertainty it brings into my everyday routine. I am the type of person who has always had a set wake-up time with enough notice of what my work week and/or my school/uni week or the combination of the two was going to look like. With this being said covid really challenged me because of the consistent yet unpredictable change it brought.
It was 2020 right after I had moved into my new house with my family and I really needed consistency. I value and appreciate having the ability to work and earn money as for me this means independence. With this in mind, I knew I needed to find a new job with more consistency. The job search began and as a joke, as I had been sitting on camping chairs in a newly built house and the TV on the floor and almost no other furniture thanks to COVID delays, I applied to work for a furniture business.
Two days later, I had an interview. I had only ever been a part of uni interviews prior to this but I practised some responses with my mum and developed answers that would make me sound like the best person for the job. Two days after the interview, which was intimidating and left me feeling unsure if I would receive a call, I received the call with the job offer. I was really unsure if I wanted to work in this environment because it was so different to the job role I had previously. My mum always says that you cannot succeed if you do not try and reminded me that if I started the role and gave it a chance for a week and didn’t like what was happening, then I could easily leave. So I gave it a chance.
That first week was better than I expected. Although the change of job role was new and different and really made me change my ways and weekly routine, it was a good difference and a great example that you shouldn’t knock it until you try it. During my first week I had the opportunity to learn all the programs and apps that the business used, made my first sales including a sauna sale which I had no knowledge on saunas and learnt as I went and even got to build new furniture models, but with this also came irate customers who were upset about the delays covid brought. These interactions scared me because I was new and didn’t have all the answers to give these customers. Instinctively, I made it a priority to learn all I could about products, shipping, warehouse, delays in shipping and even products and their benefits.
Fast forward 2 years, and I have now become the showroom manager! With my hard work and determination in the furniture business and the ability to take initiative and aim to learn as much as I could about all the areas within this business, I was given the management role. These past 2 years brought many challenges, especially with the uncertainty of shift availability due to the lockdowns, but because my hard work stood out, I was given other work opportunities within the business.
To re-member is ‘to call attention to the reaggregation of members, the figures who belong to one’s life story …’ (Myerhoff 1982, p.11). Since the introduction of the term “re-membering”, Michael White further developed the term, introducing it into narrative therapy. This development introduces the idea that people’s identities are shaped by what can be referred to as a ‘club of life’. ‘Club of life’ initiates the concept that for all of us there are members to our club of life who have a part to play in the way we come to experience ourselves (Russell & Carey, 2002).
When I look back and re-member, my biggest supporter and the highest ranked member in my club of life is my mum. I have always looked up to her and have always pushed myself to do the best I can to make her proud. She encouraged me to take a leap of faith and make a change to my daily routine and it has paid off over the past 2 years. Although my mum was the first person I turned to, this is not to say that other members of my ‘club of life’ didn’t assist with my decisions during this time.
Although my mum is number 1, I also came to realise through this reflective narrative that my best friend Teagan, inspired me to find a better job, so I asked Teagan to give me her perspective.
This task of re-membering provided the opportunity to re-engage with a past experience (Russell & Carey, 2002)that I would have otherwise forgotten about, bringing attention that the people I have surrounded myself with have similar shared values and views of how I saw myself at the time.
References:
Russell, S & Carey, M 2002, Remembering: responding to commonly asked questions co-ordinated by, viewed 21 August 2022, <http://narrativepractices.com.au/attach/pdf/Remembering_Common_Questions.pdf>.
Olivia Lopez 