I've lately been learning a lot about myself. This has largely been coming from an increasingly challenging work situation. Challenging in that it may not be my work situation for much longer. If you know me, you know that I have approximately eight positions listed on my resume covering the six years I've been out of college. Some factors outside of my control play into this:

1) I moved from Missouri to Illinois back to Missouri to Texas since college.

2) Several of these jobs were made to be temporary. Two were contract positions coordinating volunteers for festivals and two more were based around me being a student at the university. Once I stopped being a student the funding ran out quickly.

That said, I'm back in situation two more or less. My Americorps VISTA term is up next month. I knew it was a year long deal when I signed on, but from day one I decided I was going to make them want me to stay when it was over. Because of this (and in true nonprofit fashion) I worked twice as hard, took on twice as much work, and made twice as many friends around the office in an attempt to make myself irreplaceable. And it worked. Sort of. If you know nonprofit work you know that jobs are dependent on grants. And they were able to get funding for a position through a grant BUT it's only covers a part-time employee. So the clock is ticking. I have one month to cast my net even wider and try to find twelve more hours somewhere in some department to get myself there with benefits.

I worked on my resume tonight as the first step towards accepting a possible job hunt inevitability. It's getting tough to fit everything on there. I find myself deleting software from my "skills" section that I no longer remember how to use and taking out some of the padding I put in years ago when I only had one job to my name.

So what am I learning? That I'm much more valuable than the eight jobs on my resume suggest. That, because I adore the righteousness of nonprofit work, I am willing to keep running to new challenges in an effort to help the most people with the most need. This is why I want to stay at United Way. There is so much potential to reach so many people. But I know that if they can't find funding to keep me on a full-time/benefits basis that I'll have to leave. I'm 28 years old. I am an extremely hard worker when I am passionate about the work I am doing. I am creative and innovative and kind. And if I have to, I can find passion elsewhere. And do a damn good job.